


Lexicon

by manic_intent



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Full spoilers, M/M, NOTE: Most of this fic will be T-Rated, Some decisions don't sit easily on the living, That Postcanon story following the Brotherhood Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-03 12:01:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 49,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5289893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Know what’s the most depressing thing about this brave new world?” Nate asked, as Danse trudged up the grassy slope to the landing of the ruined house. “I wake up two hundred <i>fucking</i> years into the future and the music’s still the same. What the hell? Everyone’s just been listening to the same songs for a couple’a hundred years?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> S
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> P
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> S
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> I never played Fallout 1 and didn't get past much of 2 - instead I played from Fallout 3 onwards. Therefore I’ve usually tended to side with the Brotherhood… which I think was probably a mistake this time round, ah well. I regretted it partway, especially when told to murder the Railroad. I finished the game in the Minutemen ending, and then replayed with a Brotherhood ending. For the purposes of this fic, it’s the Brotherhood ending (Institute and Railroad destroyed), and I like to write these kinds of fics with default character names and appearances, same as my Dragon Age stuff. 
> 
> When I started Fallout 4 I actually didn’t think I was going to romance anyone (I looked at the pics of the companions and was like… eh.) And then I met Paladin Danse in the game… …

> Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?  
>  What is the way to the abode of light  
>  And where does darkness reside?  
>  Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?  
>  \- Excerpts, Job 38  
> 

I.

“Know what’s the most depressing thing about this brave new world?” Nate asked, as Danse trudged up the grassy slope to the landing of the ruined house. “I wake up two hundred _fucking_ years into the future and the music’s still the same. What the hell? Everyone’s just been listening to the same songs for a couple’a hundred years?” 

“The Brotherhood has its own songs,” Danse pointed out, as he reached the shattered rail. Now that the ghouls’ corpses had been cleared out, and the settlement fenced in, basic supplies and defenses set up, the settlers had turned their hands towards slowly patching up the few houses that still stood in the Sunshine Co-Op. There wasn’t much to be done for this faded little blue house, though: half of the roof was missing, and so was part of the floor within, but Nate had pulled up a rusting old chair onto a still intact part of the landing and put his feet up on a fragment of the rotten rail.

“God, don’t remind me,” Nate groaned. “Military songs. That’s one thing I don’t miss about the military. They make me profoundly depressed.” Curled against the chair, Dogmeat barked, as though in agreement, the large dog wagging its tail in delight as Nate patted it on the head. “That’s right, boy. Some things never change.” 

Danse nodded slowly, now unsure of himself, an uncomfortable and still novel sensation that seemed solely keyed to Nate’s presence. He had always known what was the right way forward before, meshed as he had been in the rigid strictures of the Brotherhood. But his newfound uncertainty had little to do with exile, or with his own unwelcome revelation about his identity. Nate had a particular talent for upending entire worlds, and Danse had not been exempt.

“Valentine’s worried about you,” Danse said finally, deciding to open with exactly why he had walked up here in the first place.

“Small settlement, small enough that we’re all tripping over each other in the cornfields. He could tell me that himself.”

“I told him that,” Danse admitted. “But he said it would be better if _I_ talked to you.”

“Really.” Nate sat up, uncurling his booted feet away from the rail. 

He was still dressed as though combat was but a moment’s notice away, Danse noted approvingly, in a now grimy Brotherhood uniform, strapped over piecemeal with steel armour picked up here and there over the Commonwealth. Nate wore a newsboy cap angled jauntily over his sharp blue eyes, and his earth-dark hair was growing long over his ears, stubble dusting his jaw. Long-fingered hands curled briefly at his flanks, knuckles brushing the silenced pistol holstered at his hip. Graceful and silent on his feet, used to walking in the dark, Nate was like no soldier Danse had ever imagined or encountered. War must have been different two centuries ago. 

“So it seems.” Danse still felt strange walking about in civvies, his Brotherhood power armour left docked in one of the houses. Any stray vertibirds overhead would be less likely to pick him out in the cornfields and cause trouble for the settlement, but it didn’t mean that he had to like it. “You’ve been sitting here by yourself and staring into space for days. Anything you’d like to talk about, soldier?”

“‘Soldier’,” Nate echoed, and he shook his head. “I think there’s still an intact chair or two that I haven’t scrapped for bits back in the house. How about you pull it up.”

It wasn’t quite a request, but Danse merely nodded and headed into the house, watching his step. He found an upturned stool in a corner and carried it out, setting it next to Nate on the landing and sitting down, their knees almost touching.

“You smell of power armour grease,” Nate said absently.

“I know. You keep telling me that. Cait, too.” 

“There’s a lot of available water, you know. We have the pumps.”

Danse nodded slowly. Born - or, more accurately, _created_ \- into a world where clean water was a luxury, Danse, like most of the rest of humanity, didn’t quite share Nate’s preoccupation with washing down once a day. “Duly noted.”

Nate flashed him one of his quick, sharp smiles. “Valentine send you up here to get mauled? He’s been giving me the side-eye all morning. Could feel him working up to something.”

“I could go get my power armour, if that’s the case.”

“Hell no. I like seeing you out of it.” This time, Nate’s gaze lingered, openly appreciative, lowering his voice, husky. “You carry off that Silver Shroud gear far better than I ever did.”

“I think you’re trying to change the topic.” Sometimes, Danse wondered why he even still felt an emotion as base as lust. Why _had_ that even been programmed into his brain? What was the point? And why was it so subjective? Showers were communal and not separated by gender, in all Brotherhood facilities, and Danse hadn’t felt any sort of arousal around the others. Nate, however. Nate was different. 

“Suppose I’m reflecting on life,” Nate said expansively, glancing back over towards the cornfields, to the mutfruit trees planted in neat rows beside tall stalks of forked yellow and green. Settlers worked on their knees in the dirt, weeding, watering, backs bent against the afternoon sun, the shuffling sounds of their industry broken by occasional laughter and the lowing complaint of brahmin. 

“What part of it?” 

“In the space of a few days I’ve murdered a great many people, some of whom were friends of mine, one of whom was possibly my son, _and_ caused a reactor meltdown in the centre of Boston,” Nate drawled. “I think I happen to have a _lot_ to reflect about.”

 _Heroes don’t have blood on their hands_. “I’m sorry that you still feel that way.”

“I’d be worried if I didn’t. Someone - a sergeant, way back - once told me, when you kill someone, you also kill part of your soul. Y’see? The more you kill, the more bits of your soul you cut off. Until at the end you don’t get worried about killing no more.” Nate turned his head, watching idly as MacCready, rifle in hand, wandered desultorily over to a guard post, checking the perimeter, the slender young man hunched determinedly against the wind, cap pulled low over his eyes, coat flapping against his knees. “I mean, even _MacCready_ over there felt bad about what we did with the Railroad. Unless his hard-as-nails mercenary schtick is just a front.”

Sometimes it was difficult to disentangle Nate’s archaic turn of phrase. “Elder Maxson decided that it was necessary.”

“Yeah. He also thought that it was necessary that you died. Let’s say I’m not yet prepared to accept Elder Maxson’s opinion as the gold standard for logic.”

“I’m still not certain that you made the right decision.”

“I thought we’d talked about this,” Nate swung his stare back to Danse, his jaw set. “D’you know, I was _this_ tempted right then to tell him and the Brotherhood to _please_ fuck themselves and jump off a cliff?”

“I… don’t think I would have liked that,” Danse said delicately, grimacing at the expletive. “You’re a Sentinel now. A credit to the Brotherhood.”

Nate rolled his eyes, and settled his ankles back on the rail. “The Elder got lucky. If he hadn’t let himself get talked down into some sort of sanity, I probably would’ve punched him right in that pretty mouth of his.”

“Elder Maxson deserves respect,” Danse observed disapprovingly. “You shouldn’t speak like that about your commanding officer.”

“Funny, I think I was told that Sentinels can do whatever they like. That’s another thing about this brave new world. How the hell did the new world’s army get so uptight?” Nate smirked over at Danse. “It didn’t use to be like this.”

Danse refused to let himself get baited. He hadn’t forgotten what Valentine had asked him to do. “The Elder’s under a great deal of expectation and stress. He’s the last of the Maxsons.” At Nate’s arched eyebrow, Danse added, “A Maxson founded the Brotherhood. Maxsons have usually served high in its ranks since. Elder Maxson’s father was unfortunately killed in action when he was very young.”

“Got to love the smell of nepotism in the morning,” Nate drawled, and Danse sighed. 

“Maybe I _should_ go and get my power armour.”

“Sorry. I’m not good company right now.”

“And I wouldn’t be any sort of worthy company myself,” Danse pointed out gently, “If I wasn’t willing to be here regardless of the weather of your moods.”

“For someone who’s supposedly on his first relationship,” Nate teased, “You sure know how to sweet talk someone, Paladin.”

He was _not_ going to be baited. “So is there something that I can do?” 

“No. I’m going to have to sort this one out myself.” Nate leaned further back in his chair, and pulled his cap down over his eyes. “But maybe you could sit with me for a while. Watch the world go by.” 

“It’s a better world now because-“

“Don’t say that,” Nate cut in. “Not when I’ve done what I’ve done to get here. Please.” 

“Sometimes sacrifices are necessary.”

“That’s a lot of comfort to the dead.”

“The dead don’t care about anything, they’re past that. It’s the living who need comfort,” Danse pointed out. “And I wish I knew how to make you feel better about the good that you’ve done.”

“Don’t, Danse. Just. Sit here with me, all right? But don’t… I don’t want to talk about anything right now.” 

“As you wish,” Danse murmured, resigned. Perhaps he’d try again in a day or so. Or maybe there was something else that he could say. He wasn’t sure who to ask. Valentine was a synth, Preston was away, and none of the others seemed remotely suitable as confidants. He felt alone all over again, all the more keenly that his dilemma had nothing to do with himself at all. 

Or was he alone? There were no secrets in the Brotherhood, after all. If Danse could get a message through to Haylen, maybe the Brotherhood could help. They owed Nate that much.

1.0.

The vertibird found Nate arguing with the Warwicks over at their homestead. “What d’you mean your wife’s been kidnapped _again_?” Nate growled. “It’s the third time in a row in a goddamned _month!_ Can’t you guys maybe, just maybe, go out in pairs when you leave the settlement?”

At his feet, Dogmeat barked excitedly and wagged its tail as the vertibird’s engines grew louder and louder, swinging into a dull thrumming roar overhead. Nate glanced up, shielding his eyes against the setting sun, annoyed. He raised his eyebrows as the vertibird landed outside the settlement, and an initiate hopped out, heading briskly past the guard tower and the junk wall towards them. 

“Sir,” the initiate saluted crisply. “Sorry to interrupt, but Elder Maxson wants to see you.”

“Really? Why?” 

“I was not so informed, sir.” The initiate looked embarrassed. Tall kid, freckled, still so shiny with resolve that it probably reflected out towards space. Nate stared at the kid grimly, then back over at the hapless Warwick family.

“How many of you are in the vertibird?”

“Uh, there’s the pilot, Captain Casey, and um, Knight Silva and another initiate, Ella, we were all on recon.” 

“And how’d that go?”

“Nothing to report, sir,” the initiate said proudly, then added belatedly, with a blush, “I’m Initiate Anderson. Sir.”

“Right. Roger. C’mere.” Roger Warwick turned a little pale, but followed on Nate’s heels obligingly as they threaded out of the homestead towards the vertibird. Within it, another too-young initiate peered out over the shoulder of a Knight in full power armour. Good. “You. Knight Silva, was it?”

“Yes sir,” said Silva, her voice made tinny by the helmet. 

“This gentleman here is in some kinda trouble. Take Ella and Anderson here and go and rescue his wife, will you? Signal the vertibird when you’re done. Any questions?”

“… No sir,” Silva said eventually, after a pointed pause. 

“For the Brotherhood,” Nate said dryly. The two initiates echoed him enthusiastically, but Silva merely nodded. 

“Ad Victoriam, Sentinel.” The Knight got heavily off the vertibird, followed by Ella, hoisting her minigun against her hip with a grinding _clank_.

Roger was so pale now that he flinched violently when Nate patted him on the shoulder. “Roger, these _nice_ people are going to help you out, and then they’re going to _raze all these fucking raider settlements_ down so they won’t try to squeeze you for more caps in the future-“

“Umm, General, it was a super mutant settlement this time round-“

“The fuck? What the hell do _super mutants_ want with caps? It’s not like they’re able to waltz into Diamond City and pay for noodles!”

Ella straightened up, raising a palm and radiating keenness with every fibre of her body. “Sir!” 

Nate stared at her, then at the Knight, who was now suspiciously immobile. “Uh, go ahead, initiate.”

“Collecting caps is a neurological remnant of what they were before, sir!” 

“… Thank you for that insight, initiate. I guess you learn something every day.”

“Statistically improbable, sir.”

Nate passed a hand over his face, even as the Knight made a small, tinny sound. “Have fun, kids. And remember. Burn it all down, all right? I want to be able to feel the flames from the Prydwen.” He paused, then added, conscientiously, “But feel free to call for back up if necessary.” 

“Understood, sir. Initiates, form up,” Silva said briskly. “Now, uh. Sir. Where did you say your wife was taken again?”

Nate was still grinning to himself as the vertibird took off, heading towards the looming gray bulk of the Prydwen far across along the coast. Nora would have liked this about the brave new world, how it no longer seemed to matter whether you were male or female or anything else: even in the Brotherhood. Total devastation seemed to have also served to create gender parity at last: it had been a little disorienting to walk about in a truly postgendered world. Lord knew that in 2077 they hadn’t even yet worked out the notion of equal pay. 

Aboard the Prydwen, Maxson was waiting for Nate in his personal chambers, of all places, and the Elder frowned and started to rise from the table, then seemed to think better of it and sat back down, as Dogmeat padded into the room and sat down by the table, accepting a peremptory pat with good nature. 

“Close the door, Sentinel.” 

Nate obeyed, though he was amused. “Something up, Elder? I thought the Brotherhood had no secrets.”

Maxson scowled. Nate hadn’t been flippant a couple of days back when he had told Danse that Maxson had a pretty mouth. Try as Maxson did to dress tough, with that eye-catching fur-trimmed coat, with his hair buzzed close to his scalp and eyes narrowed in a near-perpetual frown, even that scar across his face didn’t make Maxson any less handsome. If it wasn’t for Danse… ah, it was a pity that the Elder probably had a dynasty to perpetrate. 

“Take a seat, Sentinel,” Maxson said curtly, and Nate did, tugging out the closest chair at the bolted-down dining table and slouching onto it. This got him a second disapproving frown. “I think you mentioned before that you were in the military. Before the world ended.”

“Elder, the world ended decades before we nuked the rest of it to hell,” Nate said dryly. “A mass extinction event started around the turn of the millennium, but we never got around trying to fix things until it was too late. Things got from bad to worse, we started fighting over the bits that were left during the so-called ‘Resource Wars’, then we kicked up the Great War, and now here we are.” 

“The military, Sentinel. Which arm of it were you in?” 

“Green Beret, sir,” Nate touched his fingers ironically to the newsboy cap. “Special Forces. Trained for ‘unconventional warfare’, as the higher-ups liked to call it.” 

“And that’s an… important section?”

“Technically, it’s all important. The Army works as a whole unit. That’s the whole point,” Nate said, puzzled. “What’s this about, sir?”

“You’ve seen combat before. During the Great War.”

“Yes, sir.” In a way, this was almost nostalgic. Strange conversations with the higher ups that were always possibly a huge waste of time and/or shit starting to roll downhill had always been a key part of the Army experience, even in the Green Berets. 

“I suppose,” Maxson said stiffly, “I wanted to know if you were… Holding up well… or all right...” 

A muscle twitched in Maxson’s jaw, and his hands had clenched up over his knees; all of a sudden, the Elder looked every inch a far-too-young man of only twenty years, far too damn young to be commanding a bloodthirsty military cult, in Nate’s opinion. Too late now for regrets. Nate had fallen in comfortably with the Brotherhood because they had been the closest thing to what he had known as a normal life for most of his adulthood, back even before he and Nora had Shaun. 

Back during the War. 

“All right about what exactly, sir?”

Maxson exhaled. “It has come to my attention,” he said, even more stiffly, “That your son was apparently the Director of the Institute. That’s how you knew that the ‘child’ we found was a synth.”

Nate nodded. He had elected to leave ‘Shaun’ behind. The memory of Father speaking the deactivation code had been too fresh, the shock still unwelcome, the anger and grief too raw. He was not even sure if that now was one of his regrets. Perhaps if the synth had not been grafted to think that he was Shaun, Nate would have brought him out, left him at the Castle, perhaps. But with the grafted memories, it had felt like a violation, all over again, all that hurt scraped raw anew. Father’s last revenge from beyond the grave. 

“So you…” Maxson hesitated. “You detonated the reactor regardless.”

“He was dying already anyway,” Nate said abruptly. “Of cancer. Quicker this way. Also,” Nate added, when Maxson seemed about to interject. “I guess… maybe it’s denial or something but. I never really believed that the Director was my son. My Shaun. He looked like me, sure, like my _dad_. But all those _secrets_ , and…” Nate trailed off, but Maxson stayed silent, and after a while, Nate sighed. “I guess I felt like I couldn’t trust my eyes anymore. There was too much, all at once. I thought at first I was looking for a baby. Then a ten-year-old boy. And then this old man? I didn’t know what to believe any more.”

“It did seem strange,” Maxson said carefully. “That a stolen child, stolen for experiments, could rise to become the Director.”

“Yeah. That too, right? Fuck. It was all too good to be true. I ‘port into the dragon’s lair and it’s fucking _utopia_ , and everyone greets me like I’m God’s Dad. Training, I guess. Green Berets always expect the worst. Harder to be disappointed that way.” Nate smiled thinly. “Besides, I never did find out why they were bodysnatching people. The hell was _that_ about? Fun? If they didn’t think that synths were people, why were they programming them to go out and _be_ people? Nothing made sense. Maybe that’ll hit me later. But I’m not as upset about that particular… death. Not like I should be.”

“The Railroad, then. You were… friends.”

“Yes,” Nate said evenly, “And you told me to kill them.”

“Everyone makes their own choices-” 

_Such_ an asshole. Nate bit down his temper. “I suppose I should be glad that you didn’t also tell me to go and shoot up the Minutemen.” 

“- _however_ ,” Maxson continued sharply, “If you want to hate someone for what has been done, _I_ issued the order. You’ve operated, as far as I can tell, from a platform of good intentions, following my orders. You’re absolved.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Elder. God I wish it did,” Nate said, surprised. “Really, what brought this on? Is it because I haven’t killed anything for days?” he added sardonically.

“Not at all. I am simply concerned.” Maxson seemed caught between relief and frustration. “I… suppose this is not working. I have never had to do this before.”

“What, try to give comfort?” Nate chuckled. Clumsy as it was, he found that he _did_ appreciate it. For all that Maxson was definitely an asshole at the best of times, he _did_ care about those under his command… or, at least, those who were _human_ and under his command. “Not bad for a first try, sir. Was there anything else?”

“No. Though… Proctor Quinlan has something for you. Something’s come up over the last set of technical documents that you brought him, I believe.” 

“I thought you people weren’t going to give me orders any longer,” Nate pointed out, though he grinned. 

“Think of it as a suggestion, Sentinel-“ 

“Elder,” Kells’ voice cut in through the overhead intercom. “There’s an incident close by, near the coast. Some sort of mini nuke event on a building, multiple impacts. It’s been levelled to the ground.”

“What was in the building?” Maxson asked out aloud.

“Initial surveys indicated that it was a super mutant colony.”

“No loss then… Sentinel?” Maxson added sharply, as Nate started to laugh. 

“Sorry sir. Involuntary reflex. I’ll… go and see Quinlan now.” Nate got to his feet.

“Sentinel,” Maxson said, when Nate had his hand on the door. As Nate glanced back inquiringly, Maxson frowned down at his palms, on the table. “How is…” He trailed off. 

_I thought we weren’t going to mention You Know Who any longer_ , Nate wanted to quip, or _What do you think, sir, you destroyed his world and broke his heart_ , but instead, he shrugged. “Fine, considering. Anything else, sir?”

“No. Dismissed.” Maxson’s hands were clenching and unclenching, slowly, and Nate watched him for a heartbeat before swallowing the accusation on the tip of his tongue, and let himself out of the room, Dogmeat on his heels. He took a moment to reorient himself, to settle his nerves, then he rolled his shoulders, adjusting the weight of the rifle over his back, and headed deeper into the ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Refs:  
> http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/18/women-will-get-equal-pay-in-118-years-wef-gender-parity We’ll apparently achieve gender parity in equal pay in approx 2133…  
> 


	2. Chapter 2

i.

Arthur Maxson had grown up being told that his soul was forged from eternal steel. When he was a child he had not believed that in the least. Nothing about himself had seemed particularly special. His father had been a hero, or so he had also been told, not that Arthur remembered very much about Paladin Maxson, save for vague memories of an austere figure who was hardly ever present. As a squire, Arthur was keenly aware that he had been somewhat of a confused boy. He had been timid and quiet, and for a long time had secretly harboured hopes of becoming a Scribe - perhaps even Proctor, in turn. He had liked the few intact pre-war books that the Citadel had. He had liked to write.

And there had been Sarah. 

Beautiful, fiercely idealistic Sarah. As a child Arthur had loved her as blindly and as absolutely as only a child could love, and when she had been cut down in the Wasteland in an ultimately pointless skirmish with super mutants, defending a settler homestead - those had been dark years that Arthur preferred to forget. Rage and grief had spurred him to take risks that, but for luck, would have ended in his death and the premature demise of the Maxson line. He had been poisoned by sentiment, and in a way now Arthur was glad of it. True lessons were taught only in chapters of pain. 

Now self-doubt was something that Arthur preferred to keep to himself. He dressed the part, grew a beard to look older. But despite his bloodline and his deeds it had been a hard climb to where he was now, with the Prydwen and Liberty Prime under his command, with the Brotherhood closer and closer to the power that it deserved to be. 

And in part, until now, Danse’s unshakeable friendship and faith had been key to it all, in uniting the other Paladins beside Arthur under a single mandate, including those from the Outcasts: the splinter faction who had left Owyn Lyons’ Brotherhood in disgust. They had believed, rightly, that Owyn had betrayed his mission by prioritising settler lives over the Brotherhood’s primary missions. And yet, when the perfect soldier had fallen so gladly in line, the others had also come back into the fold. Eventually.

Danse. Damn him. _It_. Had that been accusation in the Sentinel’s eyes? Arthur was sure of it. He wasn’t so blind that he was unaware of the… attachment that Nate had to a mere synth, irrational as it was. Arthur reminded himself to be patient. Nate had proven himself time and again to be an exemplary soldier and commander. And besides, he was a man out of time, in a world that he still sometimes clearly struggled to understand. Arthur couldn’t quite imagine what that was like, to wake up alone like that. Arthur himself had never been alone. The Brotherhood and his family name ensured that. 

That message from Haylen. It could only have come from one source. _Damn_ that creature. It wasn’t enough that Danse was still out there, lurking somewhere in the Commonwealth. His reach still lingered. 

Exasperated, Arthur pushed himself up from the table, and left his room with angry strides. He headed to the flight deck, nodding curtly at the few who greeted him respectfully as he passed. At the main command deck, Arthur found Proctor Teagan waiting for him, to his surprise, and as he blinked, Teagan smiled at him, a little uneasily.

“Yeah. They let me out of that cage eventually. Sir,” he added, as a bit of an afterthought. Teagan had been Quartermaster with the Outcasts, and some habits lingered - when Arthur had found them and brought them back into the fold, traditional Brotherhood discipline had already started its inevitable decline. Tall, graying and lean, thinning hair combed back over a high widow's peak, sporting a thick moustache and a trimmed, wedge-like beard, black eyes usually narrowed in sardonic humour, Teagan slouched even now, thumbs hooked in his belt, the pistol holstered at his belt definitely nowhere near standard Brotherhood issue.

“Is there something that you need to speak to me about, Proctor?”

“What, did you think I got out of that cage just to stretch my legs in your office?” Teagan said blandly. “Sorry sir. Yes. It so happens that I’m maybe getting a little concerned, just a little, that you aren’t taking my requisition reports as seriously as you should be. Sir. With respect.” 

Arthur bit down on a sigh. Thanks to his time in the Outcasts, Proctor Teagan was excellent at his job, scrounging parts, supplies and other resources out of the meanest of environments, which was why Arthur tolerated some degree of insubordination. Besides, this was the Brotherhood, and Arthur had always valued honesty in those under his command. “Speak plainly, Proctor.” 

“Plainly? Sure. How do I put this plainly… _We are going to run out of food in four days._ F-O-U-R days. That plain enough for you, sir?”

Arthur blinked. “Your reports didn’t state that the situation was that urgent.” 

“Well ye-es, because at last instance they actually weren’t that dire as yet, although they were still fucking urgent.” Teagan drawled. “But what with the Sentinel issuing that evac order, and then you an’ Proctor Ingram deciding to take on all them refugees, well now, fuck me sideways but _maybe_ , just maybe, that escalated our supplies problem. Sir. And may I add, a couple of them refugees are pregnant, and some of them are old, and some of them are little kiddies, and _none of them_ have ever been exposed to life up above, or food up above, so we have a bit of a major medical situation on top of our resources situation.”

“Captain Cade hasn’t mentioned anything of the sort to me.” 

“Probably because he used to be best buddies with Elder Lyons the Younger, and was a _little bit_ worried, thanks to Doctor Li’s loudly held opinions, that you might decide that it was all None Of Our Fuckin’ Business and cut them all loose. And may I add, that might be a good idea. Seeing as they really are, you know, _not actually our problem_.” 

“Some of those scientists will be useful.”

“After we blew up their home and their leader, _and_ gunned down some of their friends in the crossfire? _Sure_ , sir. So useful. They’d be so grateful to us. Whoah. I sure didn’t think of that.”

Arthur sighed. His patience was wearing thin, but Teagan had a point. “So what do you suggest?” 

“D’you know who’s the biggest producer of basic resources in this bit of the world, sir?”

“Ah,” Arthur frowned to himself, thinking back over mission reports. “Diamond City, of course.” 

“Nope! It’s our friend the Sentinel. Boss of the Minutemen. I know for a fact from recon reports that he has _at least_ twenty-five self-sufficient settlements under his command. None of which, might I add, has he been particularly in a hurry to cede to us. And I asked.” 

“I’ll have a word with him,” Arthur said slowly. “Satisfied?” 

“Just make sure that it’s a very strong word, sir.” 

“The Sentinel has been key to the success of our mission in the Commonwealth,” Arthur noted stiffly. “As to the settlements… we are the Brotherhood of Steel. We are not raiders.” 

“Didn’t say it had to come to that, sir,” Proctor Teagan said, though his tone was plainly sardonic. “Now I’ll just head back and lock myself back in that cage, shall I.”

“Send the Sentinel to me if you see him.” 

“Wilco, Elder.” 

Arthur didn’t have long to wait. Quinlan wasn’t one for extensive briefings, and in many ways Nate had the habits of a cat - he had probably headed over to the bar to check on the newly reinstated Paladin Brandis, then usually did a supply check with Teagan before leaving. Arthur was still studying the thick plume of smoke still emerging from the ‘mini nuke event’ when Nate walked silently up next to him, as lightfooted as Quinlan’s cat. 

“Missed me already, Elder?” Nate drawled, all warm, sly amusement. Today, Nate’s impertinence rankled more than usual, and Arthur glowered at the Sentinel, but unfortunately, Nate was still immune to being cowed. 

“We have another problem that has just come to my attention. And it seems to me that you are the man best suited to deal with it.” 

“Y’know, for someone who was all ‘I have no further orders for you’ recently, you sure have a hell of a lot of further orders, sir.” 

“We have a supply problem with the refugees from the Institute,” Arthur said, his tone edged. “By Proctor Teagan’s estimate, they’re in desperate need of food, water and medical supplies, all of which are straining our own resources to the very limit. Naturally, my priority is first to the Brotherhood. It’s my hope that no sacrifices have to be made.”

“…You’re a right piece of work, sir,” Nate said wryly. “Fine. I’ll set up some supply lines. But we’re going to have to build up a settlement nearby. Teach everyone to be self sufficient. Which means you’re going to have to be willing to let me bring in some people to Boston Airport.” 

“Do what you see fit.” Arthur paused. “But installing, shall I add, your more questionable acquaintances within line of sight of Boston Airport may not be for the best.”

“Well hot damn,” Nate smirked. “And Nick _loves_ trading catty barbs with you people all day. It gives him life.” 

“We _are_ also ‘your people’ now, Sentinel.” 

Nate eyed Arthur in thoughtful silence, and Arthur met his study with an unflinching stare in return. Finally, it was Nate who looked away, towards the smoking ruin near the coast, and it was Nate who smiled mirthlessly, ruefully. There was something haunting about how still he was, how wan and grim. “Yeah. God help us all.”

2.0.

It was a week before Nate finally had the time to charter a vertibird out of Boston Airport towards Sunshine Co Op, drained and exhausted. The Boston Airport settlement had taken far more out of him than the others. He’d had Commonwealth settlers to help out in other settlements, all of whom were used to a hardscrabble, do-it-yourself life out on the wastelands. Cobbling together prefabs, pumps, planting crops, building defenses - all that had been easy. All Nate had to do was say the word.

The refugees, however, were shell-shocked, most of them sick from the irradiated food that was all that was available up above. Most were traumatised from the abrupt loss of their home, from being ripped away to a world that they had never seen before and had only heard the worst of. Nate could sympathise, he really could. But there was only so much that he could do, and so much patience he had for the inevitable spats, and besides, fuck Maxson and his fucking Brotherhood Priorities, really. Surely it was fucking _obvious_ that Nate was the worst person in the world to oversee an Institute resettlement project. After all, to all the refugees, Nate was Public Enemy Number One. Having him around all the time, trying to ‘help’, was really just rubbing salt all over their wounds. 

“Passing over the crater in T minus three minutes, sir,” said the pilot, in a carefully polite tone that Nate recognised from his previous life, and he hid a tired grin. Standard reproach for a GOBI, also known as a General Officer Bright Idea, a feature of military life that often, though not always, led to a whole lot of unnecessary hassle. 

“Thank you, Captain.” 

Nate had steeled himself for it, but what had been left of the Institute’s immediate grounds and its surrounding structures was now a blackened crater, yawning wide, like the eye socket of some inert God, gouged empty. Most of the buildings outside of the blast zone had been knocked flat, or had collapsed into rubble: any entry to the crater itself was an impenetrable tangle of blackened concrete and gnarled metal. There was an ugly, thick smog above it, some sort of low-hanging miasma that reminded Nate uncomfortably of the Glowing Sea.

“Well damn,” said the pilot, after a minute of awed silence. “What a rat fuck.”

“Screwed the pooch royally there, didn’t we?” Nate noted. “Bit more than usual.” 

“Don’t know about that, sir,” the pilot said neutrally. “Been told it was a big success, mission accomplished.” 

“And what do _you_ think, Captain… ah…”

“Banks, sir.” Under her helmet and the orange BoS jumpsuit, Nate realized belatedly that Banks looked about Ronnie’s age, and seemed just as unfazed by his presence, olive-skinned hands dancing with practiced ease over the controls. Captain Banks was petite, giving the impression that she was only barely tall enough for the pilot's seat, but like all jet jockey vets whom Nate had ever known, in his old life and the new, she radiated an unflappable sort of mad confidence. “Ah, in the Outcasts, we would’ve called it a straight up CATFU.“

Seemed the military really didn’t change, at least not where jet jockeys were concerned. It was a relief, of sorts. “Outcasts?” 

“Long story, sir.” 

“Give me the short version.”

“Uh, well sir-“ 

“In your own words, Captain.” 

“All right sir. Back in the Capital Wasteland the Brotherhood was under the command of Elder Lyons. But he was more interested in policing the civvies. So everything went totally FUBAR, and those of us with a GOFO, that’s, uh-“ 

“Grasp of the Fucking Obvious, yes, I know.” 

“Yeah. Anyway. We decided to leave and do our own thing before we all ran out of ammo and died having to punch out super mutants with our rifles. Called ourselves the Outcasts. Had a good run. Then few years back some new Elder comes along and tells us to come back in to the fold.”

“And you guys just agreed to?” Nate asked, incredulous. “How old would Maxson have been then, sixteen? Older?” 

“Not much,” Banks agreed. “Many of us thought he was just a snot-nosed kid with a big name at first. But I guess we warmed up to him.” 

“Really.” 

“Fact that he came over to look for us with that fucking big blimp at his back and a posse of his best friends in power armour beside him probably helped,” Banks conceded. 

“But still-“

“Well okay, sir. At first we told him to fuck off. So we went to war and he kicked our asses. He might not look like much, but the Elder’s a bit of a tactical genius in his own right. And I’m not saying that to suck up.” 

“That’s more like it, Captain,” Nate said dryly. “I didn’t quite get the feeling that Elder Maxson was really one for soft diplomacy.”

“Nope. And that’s why we’ve warmed up to him. Really did, this time. Being part of all this again, with the Prydwen, Liberty Prime, kicking ass, getting rid of the Institute? That’s what the Brotherhood is about. Sir. Fuck ‘soft diplomacy’.” 

“Right,” Nate could feel himself starting to get a little depressed all over again. 

“And to be honest, sir. Most of us didn’t know what to think of you at first. Particularly us ex-Outcasts. Thought you’d be some kinda short timer, or, uh, a bit of a Whiskey Delta. But you’re not half bad. Even if I’m not sure how you intend to unfuck things.” 

“Is that what I’m meant to be doing now?” 

“Ain’t no secrets in the Brotherhood, sir. Everyone knows Proctor Quinlan’s concerned about the rads from the reactor meltdown. He’s been bitching about it for _days_ , moaning about how nobody ever fucking listens to Research unless they’re talking about grenades. The Proctor chats you up, and then you get assigned your very own bird? Yeah. Not much of a leap of logic there even for us jet jockeys, sir.” 

“About that,” Nate said mildly, as they cleared the blast zone, heading westwards. “I need to talk to someone where we’re going about Quinlan’s problem. But I’ll also much appreciate it if you don’t, say, open fire until told to.” 

“Copy that sir,” Banks said dryly. “And before you add, yeah, us Outcasts, we _know_ you didn’t shoot Danse. You’re not the sort. Elder Maxson and the others? They’re good by us now. But sometimes it’s pretty damn obvious they have NFI how the world works. Elder’s probably lucky that you didn’t shoot _him_ in the face.”

“That’s because he’s also lucky that his face is cute,” Nate drawled, and Banks chuckled hoarsely, banking the vertibird around a ruined tower, deftly avoiding a few snatches of flak from surprised super mutants below. 

“Still, and just saying, if the ‘friend’ we’re picking up happens to be Danse, I sort of would appreciate not having to head back close to the Prydwen and get shot down on general principles. Sir.” 

“It’s not Danse. But it’s probably still a synth. If that helps.” 

“… I wonder who I pissed off over on the motherbird,” Banks said sadly. 

“Chin up, soldier. Synths aren’t so bad. Nick’s mostly clean, isn’t too smart mouthed, and means well. And he hasn’t shot anyone I liked in the back as yet. Kinda objects to the practice in general, actually.” 

Reassurances or not, Banks was still sulking when she landed the vertibird down outside the Sunshine co op. Danse was nowhere to be seen, thankfully - Nate wasn’t too convinced of Banks’ promise to hold fire until told not to - but Nick paused and turned towards them as Dogmeat scrambled over to greet him.

“Returning in style, I see,” Nick said, the synth skin on his face stretching slightly over his glowing yellow eyes, a sign of surprise. “Maybe not a good idea, boss, what with our mutual friend still on the premises.”

“I’ve negotiated a minor cease fire at present given the gravity of the situation.” The weeks hadn't yet managed to inure Nate to Nick Valentine's appearance the way Diamond City was to the synth detective. Mechanical instead of bio-engineered like the Gen-3 synths, time hadn't been kind to Nick's outward appearance, whirring silver gears and little pumping valves were visible under his patchwork pale synth skin. Despite the heat of the morning sun, Nick was still dressed in his usual broad-rimmed brown hat, tan coat, tie, shirt and trousers, but for the unsettling eyes and the patches in his cheek every inch the image of a noir-era detective.

“There’s another situation? Already?”

“Kind of a follow-on situation,” Nate admitted, “What with us causing a reactor failure in the middle of the Commonwealth.”

“Oh,” Nick noted, very dryly. “ _That_ problem. You humans probably should have maybe thought a _little_ bit further ahead there. Especially that gun-happy kid in the fur collar up on that giant metal ship.”

“Nobody ever listens to me until things are going to hell,” Nate pointed out. “The Brotherhood has a solution, or so they think. But I need your help.” 

“Well, I was getting bored here anyway.” Nick brightened up. “We heading off now?” 

“In a sec.” Nate patted Nick on the arm. “Keep an eye on that vertibird, willya? Back soon.” 

“Ah. Right,” Nick said, amused. “Take your time. With our mutual friend. Maybe do it a few times.”

Nate choked. “I wasn’t going to…!”

“Curie told me that getting your pipes cleaned is a normal part of human behaviour, and that you’d probably be a happier person if you did it more often.” 

“… That’s it. I’m sending Curie to the coastal cottage.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Saturday :) Early chapter. **Warning** : This chapter raises the overall rating of the fic to E.

II.

“I think I’ve found the real Army,” was the first thing that Nate said when he found Danse. “They were in the Brotherhood all along, and they’re called the Outcasts.”

“What brought this on?” Danse had commandeered a small shack in the corner of the Sunshine Co Op, had a power armour repair rack built, and a bed set up in a corner. There was no space in the shack for anything else, and it did, he had to admit, smell of power armour grease even at the best of times. Nate had burst in while Danse had been calibrating the medical pump on his T-60 gear, and he was elbow deep in grease, tools scattered by his knees. 

Nate sat down on the bed, next to the carefully folded Silver Shroud coat and scarf. “Got assigned my own vertibird. Pilot’s one Captain Banks. Know her?”

“Hard to forget a face when they’ve tried to shoot you while you’re pulling them out from a wreck,” Danse said mildly. “All the while loudly discussing my ancestry in pejorative language unworthy of a Brotherhood Captain.” He paused. “Turns out she was wrong on all counts.” 

“Seems the Outcasts don’t believe the story about you being dead.”

“That’s not a good thing,” Danse frowned. “The Elder was keen on reintegrating all of them in full. A general amnesty, if you will. We left a number of them behind in the Citadel, but they still make up more than half of the Prydwen’s crew, including part of its high command. Proctor Teagan, for one. And Lancer Captain Kells.”

“Seems they were a splinter faction that came back into the fold after Maxson beat them into submission.”

“You could say that. They’re no longer a splinter faction,” Danse added, wondering yet again what Nate was trying to say. He wiped his hands down on a rag, getting up from behind the rack. “Did something come up with the Outcasts? You’ve been away for a week.” Danse hoped not. The Brotherhood could not afford another civil war.

“Could say a couple of clusterfucks came up at the same time,” Nate grumbled, as Danse sat down on the cot beside him, the old springs creaking under their weight. “Turns out the Brotherhood doesn’t have the capacity to take on refugees, let alone all the people we got out of the Institute. They’re sick, they’re hungry, and they think I’m the Antichrist. Naturally Maxson decides that it’s really my problem anyway, and dumps it all in my lap.” 

“The Brotherhood’s primary mission doesn’t prioritise the welfare of settlers. It has a greater vision.”

Nate rolled his eyes. “Tech over people, huh? I wonder where I heard that before. The Institute! No wait. The Railroad as well! Same shit, different colour.”

Despite himself, Danse bristled. “We’re nothing like the Institute. Or the Railroad.” 

Nate eyed him silently, his jaw set. How had Danse missed this before? That helpless wounded anger, simmering so close by. All that black despair. But before he could think of anything at all to say, Nate looked away, his expression smoothing away to his usual wry calm. “Nate,” Danse tried, gentling his tone. “How are you… how are you holding up?”

“Fucking fine, actually. I wish everyone would stop asking me that. Even _Maxson_ tried to be nice to me a week ago, though I think the effort nearly gave him an aneurysm, and he was back to being a total dick within the hour.” 

Danse swallowed his instinctive reproach with some effort. So it seemed that his message to Haylen had gotten out, though he hadn’t expected _Maxson_ to attempt to help personally. “The refugee problem is resolved then?”

“Hardly. And you know what. I get the feeling that most of the Brotherhood don’t want them around. Even though _we’re_ the reason why they’ve been displaced. They’re civilians! They’ve got nowhere to go and it was our fault that they don’t. If I could, I’d get Preston to handle a transfer to the Castle, maybe, but there’s no way the Minutemen could handle medical on top of supply.” Nate pinched at the bridge of his nose. “I’ve gotten nominal permission from Maxson to bring Curie to Boston Airport to pitch in, and I’ve sent Ronnie and a couple of Minutemen from the Castle to oversee things. Think I’ll need Cogsworth as well, and maybe some of the Mr Handy robots from Greygarden. That’s the best I can do for now, fuck.” 

“Seems like a good solution.”

“It’s all stopgap while the settlement gets set up. In the meantime I’m having the other settlements send in any surplus. But no one’s happy about it. Hell, you should’ve seen Preston’s _face_. He doesn’t mind feeding the refugees, even though doing it’s stretching everyone to the limit. But he sure as hell has a problem with helping to feed the Brotherhood on top of that.” 

“You’re the General.” 

“Must be nice to be Maxson,” Nate drawled sardonically. “It’d be a pleasant change to be able to inspire blind devotion. Rather than, you know, having to have a shouting match with your second in command for an hour. God. This isn’t what I signed up for. Everyone needs to have a GOFO. If the Brotherhood get too hungry, they might use all that ‘shock and awe’ weaponry to get what they want. But if the Minutemen settlements have to keep handing over supplies for nothing, sooner or later they might decide to, say, poison the fuck out of the mutfruits. Meanwhile, let’s not forget that a great number of the Institute refugees want nothing to do with anyone and hate us for displacing them. Oh! And there are still renegade synths out there. _And_ Quinlan wants me to solve the follow-on problems from a reactor failure.”

Danse stared at his boots for a long moment. Finally, he said, “This is why I used to hope that I would never be named to high command.” 

Nate laughed, startled. “Fucking hell. I should’ve known that promotion was a trap.” 

“I could help,” Danse offered. “Hunting renegade synths. I could do that.” 

“Power armour’s really visible from the air, Danse. Especially since it seems that half of the Brotherhood doesn’t actually think that you’re dead.”

“I’m not reliant on power armour.” 

“Really? When’s the last time you went into a skirmish without it? Or without some sorta backup?”

“The rules of engagement are the same. I’ll just need to be more careful. Let me help you.” 

Nate stared at Danse uncomfortably. “I’m kinda… about to head out with Nick, actually,” he admitted awkwardly. “Quinlan’s matter, I think that’s my priority right now. We um… really fucked over that bit of the Commonwealth. Maybe even affected the groundwater.” 

“It should be your priority.” Danse couldn’t help the pang that he felt at that, as much as it was logical for Nate to take along the synth detective to solve what was likely going to be a technological puzzle. “I’ve been running my own missions for years. I can work on my own.” 

“… Fine. But take MacCready with you. Or Cait. Someone. Hell. I didn’t want to add worrying about you to my full plate of existing clusterfucks. I regret talking to you now.” 

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Danse murmured, and leaned over, tentative. 

Nate did the rest, surging up for the kiss, sloppy and rough at first, until he settled over Danse’s lap, knees digging onto the mattress at his hips. Danse dropped his hands down to Nate’s narrow hips, squeezing appreciatively, pulling him closer. The engineering that had gone into his creation had been impressive. The weight of Nate curled over his knees, like this, the warmth of him, and most of all, the way Danse got breathless like this, lightheaded: nothing about all that felt in the least artificial, fed down through sensors, or whatever it was. The yielding press of Nate’s mouth on his, the teasing flick of his tongue, _lust_ , his erection pressed achingly close to Nate’s pert ass. The fact that he could even feel all this was in itself a spectacular waste of technology. And yet-

“You’re overthinking again,” Nate murmured, his breath a tickling tease against Danse’s jaw, nimble fingers tugging at his belt buckle.

“Thought that you were, uh, heading out with Valentine.”

“In a bit, sure. But I might be gone for a while, and you might be gone for a while, so we might as well say some goodbyes with a lasting impression, hm?” Nate squeezed the growing bulge in Danse’s trousers, teasingly, and grinned as Danse choked out a groan and pushed eagerly into his grip. 

Sensation. Was this what it was like for humans as well? An overwhelming, conflicting undertow of taste, want, pain? Was desire as insidious for humans, or was it because that he was a synth that when Nate pulled off the bed and knelt before him, instead of horror and embarrassment all that drove Danse instead was hungry possessiveness? His fingers in Nate’s hair, the newsboy cap knocked off somewhere, his arousal pulled free, Nate’s playfully coy smirk, _licking his lips_ , God. Was it human to tighten his grip, to pull Nate closer, to moan as Nate gasped, a hoarse sound that was neither just pain or pleasure? 

Sensation. Every teasing flick of Nate’s tongue against Danse’s cock, the unyielding curl of his fingers against the root, every maddening brush of Nate’s lips, his free hand pulling urgently at his own clothes, the belts, his holster. “Please,” Danse whispered. Had he ever begged before? He wasn’t sure. He had been ready to, in the bunker, had Nate refused to kill him. He had been breathless with pride, ready for his fate. Now-

“Stop thinking,” Nate told him, and took Danse into his mouth, a deliberate press of wet heat that rocked a whine shut against Danse’s clenched teeth, his hands curling into Nate’s shoulders, over shoulder plating, digging against straps and buckles. 

Nate chuckled, muffled, a sweet humming vibration that made Danse’s toes curl and his hips jump, punching a low drumming moan from Nate as he took him in another inch, then another, until his stretched mouth was pressed against his fingers. Danse could feel the back of Nate’s throat, the flat of his tongue, but most of all, irrationally, he felt that he could feel Nate’s pleasure, his catlike satisfaction as he moaned again and started to suck, throat contracting in a torturous damning rhythm. Nate’s hand was moving below, rhythmic, echoing the pull of the hand he had on Danse’s cock, and it took all the discipline Danse could summon up not to instantly thrust deeper, to let himself go. 

Self-control always seemed a distant spectator wherever Nate was concerned, though, and despite all reason Nate seemed to _like_ it when Danse’s control frayed, when he moved his hand to the back of Nate’s skull to pull Nate onto his cock. Nate always choked and muffled whines and tried to take more, hungry, always hungry, greedy to the last, shaking off Danse’s halfhearted warning shoves at his shoulder, drinking him down as Danse stuffed fingers into his own mouth to stifle his cries. 

“Really shouldn’t do that,” Danse managed to protest gruffly, when Nate sat up, grinning and so very smug. “Don’t know what that, uh, fluid is made of.”

“Hasn’t killed me yet.” Nate said cheerfully, his voice rusty from the abuse, scrambling back up onto the cot for a kiss, defiance bitter and filthy on his tongue. The shack smelled of sex, Nate’s cock already soft as Danse pressed his knuckles against it, wet. They kissed as they cleaned up, wiping down with rags, then Nate leaned up to kiss Danse on the forehead, tender, hesitant. 

“Go,” Danse said, because he knew Nate was waiting to hear it. _Wish I could go with you_ , he nearly added, biting down on the impulse just in time. “Be careful.”

“ _You_ be careful,” Nate shot back. “Seriously.” 

“I’m always serious,” Danse noted, trying for some humour. “MacCready tells me that it’s a problem.”

“Yeah.” Nate set his hands on Danse’s shoulders, sitting back, sober, searching. Then he dove over for a swift, hard kiss, and climbed off, buckling up. “Good hunting.” 

“Go save the world again, soldier.” Danse replied, and Nate grinned at him, picking up his hat, saluting playfully before ducking out of the shack. Alone, Danse shifted back until his shoulder blades were pressed against the coarse wooden planks of the wall, absently setting his clothes to rights, listening. Eventually, there was a mechanical purr that edged into a dull roar, as the vertibird lifted up from beyond the settlement and climbed away.

3.0.

They flew Curie and Cogsworth to Boston Airport. Both of them were clearly robots, which hopefully would make their integration into the Institute community somewhat less controversial. Cogsworth instantly floated off to help with the crop field, tutting all the way about the _proper_ application of fertiliser, while Curie followed Nate towards the old supermarket building that had been designated as an infirmary.

The territory that had been expanded and cleared for Institute refugee use was not Boston Airfield proper - that was still purely for Brotherhood use - but was within sight, close to the water. Purifiers had been set up, and enough rubble cleared that crops could be planted, although until those bore fruit the settlement was going to have to rely heavily on supply lines. The teleporter array that Ingram and Nate had once built to get Nate into the Institute had already been scavenged, its generators moved to power lights, perimeter defences and the infirmary.

“Oh dear,” Curie murmured, in her thick accent, as they threaded through towards the supermarket. “We’re not quite welcome, are we?”

Nate nodded. The refugees they passed either averted their eyes, walked away quickly, or simply stared, haunted and grim. There was still that dazed sense of displacement, of shocked horror. Maxson had extended the settlement a Brotherhood security element, but whether for their sake or his own it wasn’t clear. Knights in power armour patrolled the fenced-off settlement and stood ready at the two fortified entrances. The whole place had the rather depressing feel of an internment camp.

He found Ronnie and Captain Cade in the middle of the converted supermarket. Shelves had been stacked to the side, and filled neatly with supplies. The rest of the floor was filled with cots, most holding refugees of varying ages and genders, curled into fetal positions. The supermarket stank of disinfectant warring with human vomit and waste. Cade, a lean, wan middle-aged man with an unsmiling mouth, looked even more harried than usual, his team of volunteers - mostly other Institute doctors - buzzing around the large room. Further down, Doctor Li was fussing beside an elderly patient, taking his temperature. 

“Hey,” Nate said, when he got close. 

“Sentinel.” Cade acknowledged him. 

“General. Hope you brought help.”

“Kinda. This is Curie. She’s a medical bot. Very good at what she does. Should be able to help run this place. Let Captain Cade here get some sleep.” 

“A Mr Handy robot?” Cade frowned. “I don’t-“

“My apologies,” Curie said firmly, “I am C.U.R.I.E., or, a Contagions Vulnerability Robotic Infirmary Engineer. I was created to manufacture cures that would assist humanity, and I have two centuries of medical experience. I assure you that I am fully capable of rendering appropriate assistance.”

“She’s Vault-Tec,” Nate tried to explain. 

“Oh! That changes things.” Cade looked cheered. “Curie, was it? I’m Knight Captain Cade of the Brotherhood of Steel. Let me introduce you to Doctor Li.” 

“A word, General?” Ronnie asked, and they left Cade chatting with Curie. Nate followed her out of the supermarket, studying her. 

Still dressed in military fatigues, with her beret, Ronnie looked grimmer than ever, the lines cut deeper against her mouth and at the crow’s feet by her eyes. Her ever-present rifle was slung against her back, and she walked with a purposeful stride, her boots crunching over gravel as she led Nate out and into a quiet pocket between the infirmary and a ruined shell of a car. Dogmeat greeted her with an excited whine, having stayed outside the infirmary. Nick was nowhere to be seen. 

“How’s things, Ronnie?” 

“Things?” Ronnie repeated, sourly. “This is a rum job you vomited on me, General.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Ronnie grunted. “Not that Preston’s happy about it. But we can both see why you’re doing it. Minutemen creed, yeah? We’re all in this together. And these people, most of them had nothing to do with them synths. Can’t help where we were born. What are we meant to do, let them all die?” 

“That’s right,” Nate said, so relieved that his throat clenched for a moment. “God, Ronnie. You don’t know how happy I am to hear you say that.” 

“You’ve been living with the crazy tinhatters for too long, that’s why,” Ronnie said, amused. “They got their rifles so far up their asses, the muzzles can probably see daylight. Look, General. Your heart’s in the right place. Preston might be annoyed about all this right now, but he knows that. He’ll come round. If he doesn’t, I’ll drag him round.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Thing is,” Ronnie added. “Minutemen’s still got their hands full with all the other settlements. This settlement’s coming along, sure. We’re going through a lot of Rad-aways and RadXs, but people are still getting sick. We lost one of the babies yesterday. Miscarriage. Stress and bad food, low rations, they got to the mum. Bad all round.”

Nate flinched. “I’m sorry to hear that. Maybe if I-“

“Maybe best you don’t stay here too long,” Ronnie cut in. “People will come around. You’re the reason why they’re even still alive to begin with. But right now, everything’s still too raw.”

“They give you any trouble?”

“Me? Naw. I’m an old woman. Besides, they rather deal with me than the tincans. Though Cade and his friends ain’t that bad.” Ronnie added thoughtfully. “Turns out the tincans aren’t all assholes. Who’d have known.” 

“I wish things could’ve been different,” Nate admitted, pensively. “But I don’t know if they could’ve been. The Institute made its bed a long time ago, before I was even unfrozen. Now it just has to sleep in it. I’m sorry it came to this. But that’s just how the cards fell.” 

“You don’t know how glad _I_ am to hear you say that, General,” Ronnie told him. “Preston and I and the rest, we follow you because you want to help everyone. _Everyone_ , not just who’s convenient, or who’s a synth, or a ghoul, or a tinhat or an underground egghead. Don’t ever lose sight of it.”

“I’ll try. Thanks Ronnie. Sorry to push all this on you on your old age.” Nate smirked.

Ronnie rolled her eyes. “Get out of here, General.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you guys ask why Curie is still a Mr Handy robot in this story, the only companions I managed to get to Idolised were Danse and Preston, fail. How the hell do people manage to get everyone’s approval up high enough to do their quests without doing the thing where you repeatedly shoot and heal Dogmeat? Too hard. (Though I hear Strong is pretty easy).


	4. Chapter 4

III.

When Danse conscientiously raised the issue of heading out on a new mission at dinner, MacCready sniggered. “So you want us to… go hunting Institute synths… with an Institute synth? Wow. Awesome idea, brother.”

Danse narrowed his eyes. He had never really approved of MacCready - not that MacCready was even the most objectionable of Nate’s ragtag band of friends. The skinny young man in the cap and coat was smartmouthed, seemingly amoral, and distrustful, his dark eyes usually narrowed in sardonic amusement, his mouth curled thinly with distaste. At least he kept himself neat, even with a thin moustache and beard, but other than that Danse was careful not to have to spend any time around MacCready where possible. 

Piper jumped quickly to his defense. “By that reasoning, Nick’s an Institute synth, too.”

“One that they tossed out into the junk heap. Nick’s fine by me. I mean, he’s obviously a robot, not so much a synth. Whatever. It’s the synths that look like humans that give me the creeps.”

“So it’ll make you more comfortable if I remove part of my face?” Danse asked dryly. 

“Hell no. Besides, the boss will kill me. It’ll reduce your fun value as a sex robo- _yeeoww!_ ” MacCready yelped, as Piper stomped down hard on his foot. He nearly spilled his bowl of noodles over his lap, even as Piper glared at him over hers. “Hey, I’m not judging over here, Miss Reporter.”

“You are so totally judging.” Piper growled. Like most of Nate’s human companions, Piper was young, and like Nate, wore her dark hair tucked under a newsboy cap, always starkly visible from afar thanks to her red leather coat. 

“You ever see me raise it with the boss, huh? I think people should be free to fuck over whomever they like,” MacCready put his noodle bowl down, nursing his foot. “I mean, I could’ve said, hey, if you really wanted to fuck someone from the Brotherhood, there’s a lot of hot pieces of ass over on the Prydwen that are most probably likely actually real… Or, you know, said something like, hey boss, so if ‘Father’ is your son, and all the synths have DNA from your son, isn’t fucking Danse over here kinda like fucking a grandson? Shit like that.”

Danse pressed a palm over his face. “Thanks, MacCready.” 

“Don’t mention it. Piper, you stamp on me one more time and I’m going to knife you in the stomach.”

Piper flopped back down on her chair, scowling angrily. “Don’t mind him, he talks shit all the time,” she told Danse comfortingly. “I’ll go with you. It’ll make a good story. Besides, I’m bored.”

“I don’t think I want to end up as the focus of one of your newspaper stories,” Danse pointed out. “I’m meant to be lying low.”

“I wasn’t going to write you into it. Honestly, Danse.” Piper sniffed. “But going after renegade synths, cleaning up… aftermath stories are great. I could even do a bit of a perspective line, get a quote from the boss and all that. It’ll sell pretty well, I think.” She perked up at the thought. “So when do we leave?”

“Are you sure that you want to go?” Danse asked doubtfully. Offensive as MacCready was, he was the only one of Nate’s available companions - other than Strong, whom Danse carefully avoided at all times - who seemed readily suited to dangerous work. Cait, Nate’s other suggestion, was passed out under the crops only metres away, having binged on whisky. Not a good option. 

“Don’t insult me,” Piper told him. “I’ve been walking around the Commonwealth for years looking for stories, sniffing around the Institute, even. I know how to take care of myself. Besides, I’ve got the most experience out of all of us in tracing Institute synths. _And_ ,” she added triumphantly, “I’m not _scared_ , like MacScardey here.”

“Fuck you,” MacCready said, incredulous. “I’m not scared! You… what the fuck? You think this is kiddie playschool? I just think it’s not a good idea to go hunting synths with a synth!” 

“That’s okay, MacScardey, I can watch my back.” 

“That’s enough, the two of you,” Danse said wearily. “Piper, thank you. We’ll leave tomorrow morning. Pack supplies. Someone needs to stay here and watch over the settlement.”

“Watch over… wait,” MacCready frowned at Danse suspiciously. “How come I get the most boring job? You got something against me, sexbot?” 

“ _MacCready_ ,” Piper hissed. 

“I can’t help it! I’ve got the shack next to theirs. You should’a heard them go at it before. Fucking hell. Literally. A _fucking_ hell.” 

“… Sorry,” Danse said, embarrassed. He _had_ thought Nate was a little loud sometimes. 

“Hey, no skin off my nose. I got no problem with people having sex with robots. It’s using robots to kidnap people and then replace them that gives me the creeps. Speaking of which,” MacCready added. “Was there an original Paladin Danse out there, you think? Or did you get switched over when you were Kiddie Danse?”

“I…” Danse blinked. “I never thought about it.” That was true. If synths masquerading as humans had replaced them, along with the memories, then had there been an original, human Danse out there? What had happened to him? Had he died in the Institute during the reactor failure? Or years ago? “I never thought about it,” he repeated slowly. “I just… every memory in my head feels real to me. I don’t know which are mine.” 

“There’s this place in Goodneighbor called the Memory Den,” Piper suggested. “We could go there and have a look. Besides, if we’re out looking for renegade synths, could be they went there as well, for help. It’s a synth-sympathetic place. If you play your cards right, and I watch your back, we could get two mole rats with one stone.” 

“Look,” MacCready added uneasily. “It was just a thought, all right? Don’t go crazy and start shooting at us or something. Don’t wanna have to explain to the boss why we had to jump you and bury the bits in separate graves.” 

“You could try,” Danse said, very evenly. 

“Besides, so what, right? About which bits are real? The bits before you became one of the Brotherhood?” MacCready shrugged. “Whatever, right, I bet it sucked, real or not. The bit after? So what, you bucketheads, you’re all the same. Training montage. How fun. The bit where shit actually got real would’ve been when you met the boss, right? Ain’t no one out there like him, and I’ve met some really out there people in my time. What does it matter whether your Before-The-Boss life was real or not?” 

“I’ll still like to know what happened to all the people who got taken,” Piper cut in, before Danse could struggle to even come up with an answer. “We never got to the bottom of that.” 

“Didn’t the boss grab some network scanner holotape off the Institute before? Handed it to the Brotherhood, right?” MacCready glanced at Danse. “You still got friends there? Maybe we could get it sent to us quietly.”

“Not to us. To… to that Minuteman over in Sanctuary. Sturges. He can have a look at it.” Piper suggested. “See if the Institute had any other hideouts around the Commonwealth or beyond. I mean. You weren’t from here, right? Maybe they’ve got sections out in the Capital Wasteland.” 

Danse hadn’t thought of that either. “You’re right,” he told her quietly. “It’s unlikely that I was… switched… when I was in the Brotherhood. Security’s tight in the Citadel, and we never heard of any Institute activity in the Capital Wastelands. Not until I came here, and I was always around my team.” Or was he? Maybe he _was_ switched in the Commonwealth. Maybe out there, there was really still a Paladin Danse, languishing somewhere. It would’ve been easier to grab him in the Commonwealth. If so, he had a twofold responsibility. 

But he remembered all that loss so keenly. He remembered the decision he had made to stop trying to revive one of his men, Scribe Haylen’s subsequent breakdown, comforting her. Was he switched here? Or before, when he was a child? He did not know. Nor did he know what was better. He finished his portion with no real appetite or interest, and washed his bowl in silence. Piper and MacCready were squabbling again over something, and they fell silent as he came back over towards them. 

“Tomorrow morning, we’ll go after breakfast,” Danse said to Piper. “I’ll send my Brotherhood contact a message. She’ll get a copy of that tape to Sturges.” 

“Yeah. Get some rest.” Piper’s expression was soft. Sympathetic, perhaps. 

Danse wasn’t comforted in the least: he felt almost dizzy with newfound self-disgust. He had been feeling so sorry for himself over the revelation that he was a synth that he hadn’t given a thought about the original Danse. He had been selfish all over again. Over the night, he slept little, and spent most of it restlessly cleaning his rifle, then packing neatly and meticulously, taking his time. It did little to ease his mind. 

Piper was subdued at breakfast, never having been quite a morning person. Cait was still passed out under the crops, and Strong had wandered out of the settlement, on his morning roving patrol looking for hapless raiders to trouble. Breakfast was cornbread toasted on stones, and they packed extras for the road. As Danse met Piper by the settlement turrets, he noted with some surprise that MacCready was jogging over towards them, a packed bag slung over his shoulder along with his rifle, looking sheepish. 

“MacCready,” Piper drawled. “Fancy that. Going for a morning stroll?” 

“I’m bored here anyway and I don’t want to babysit Miss Falling Over Drunk and Mister Obsessed Over Human Milk.” MacCready shuddered. “Anyone figured what that was about? Because, seriously, _gross_.” 

“Glad to have you with us,” Danse said dryly. 

“Whatever,” MacCready actually even seemed slightly embarrassed, ducking his head. “I haven’t shot anything in the face for a _week_. I’m so rusty it’s not even funny anymore. Let’s just get this show on the road.”

4.0.

Previously, crossing the Glowing Sea was a pain in the fucking ass. The problem wasn’t the rads, not exactly: power armour had held up well, even if Hancock, who was immune anyway, had bitched repeatedly, something about scouring a thoroughly irradiated haystack for a bent needle. It wasn’t even the random deathclaws that had hunted them through the grounds, grown huge and mutated from the rads. Not even the weird-as-fuck little cult that they had found at the impact crater. The problem was _all of these and more_. Visibility was at zero, there was no stopping to eat, drink or piss, just a straight out endurance run to the end. They’d been lucky to finally find Virgil when they did: Nate had been lightheaded with thirst and hunger by that point.

Now that they were here by vertibird, Nate could finally appreciate how insane his original decision to trek all the way to Virgil’s cave had been. So much could have gone wrong. The vast expanse of the Glowing Sea stretched away to either side beneath him, far below, the irradiated low-floating clouds chokingly thick and an ugly rot-green, the ravaged earth rent with craters, ravines, and bogs. 

“You crossed this on foot before?” Nick said, staring down. 

“I was in Brotherhood-issued power armour at the time, and I took Hancock with me - he’s a ghoul, he doesn’t mind rads.” 

“Seriously?” Captain Banks said, sounding awed. “Holy hell. You couldn’t _pay_ me to land down there, let alone walk across it.”

Nate cleared his throat. “Well uh, Captain Banks, I actually do need you to land us down there while we make a few inquiries and pick us up at the same spot in an hour. But we’ve got some RadXs and Rad-aways for any rads that you chalk up.”

“IFR, sir. With all due respect. If something were to happen to the bird - ooh, I don’t even like the look of all that dust, or all that lightning - we’ll all be Lima Lima Mike Foxtrot.” 

“… Either the Brotherhood has a whole separate language that I didn’t notice before when I was aboard the Prydwen, or I’ve finally broken the English synch in my brain,” Nick said, after a pause. 

“She said that she fucking refuses and that if something happens to the vertibird we’ll be lost like a motherfucker,” Nate translated absently, as he zipped himself into the hazmat suit. “Look, Captain Banks, there’s someone I need to talk to down there, and I’m the MFWIC on this job, yeah? Easy in, easy out.” 

“Where?” 

“Those mountains at eleven o’clock. Past the impact crater.”

“You want me to land on a mountain in the middle of a rad storm right next to ground zero? We are _so_ gonna catch a dirt nap,” Banks said sadly. 

“I have full confidence in your jet jockey skills, Captain.” 

“You’ve been assigned personally to the Sentinel, they said,” Banks muttered, as she angled the vertibird towards the mountains beyond the impact crater. “It’s a great honour, they said.” 

“It’s so nice to see that you’re inspiring devotion and awe among your Brotherhood subordinates,” Nick told him. 

“I know, right? I should ask Maxson what’s his secret. Maybe it’s his style. Got to find out where he got that coat made.” 

Despite Captain Banks’ complaints and dire predictions, they did get close enough to Virgil’s cave for Nick and Nate to jump off without a hitch. The vertibird lifted off, hopefully with the intent to actually come back within an hour, and Nate made his way into the cave, with Nick at his heels. 

“Virgil?” Nate called, once they got close to the strings of cans. “Hey, you still there? Everything okay?”

“Nate? Is that you?” Virgil replied, further in. Relieved, Nate stepped cautiously out around the curve in the tunnel, and breathed out as the turrets stayed inert. Walking past them, he headed briskly into Virgil’s lab, where he found Virgil peering up at him from behind his terminal. 

Virgil’s cave looked just as Nate had left it, with a few helper robots floating about, busy tidying up experiments and tools on the workbenches lining the sides. Part of a mole rat carcass was being salted and dried in a corner of the cave, and Virgil was typing away at a terminal set at a central workbench, boxes of dry rations and water at his elbow. As a renegade Institute scientist, Virgil had chosen to come to the Glowing Sea to hide from the Institute’s late fixer, Kellogg, and had turned himself into a super mutant to survive. The serum that Nate had found in the Institute had turned him back, and he looked, although a little blocky at the edges, more or less human now. 

“Looking good!” Nate grinned. “Grats. Virgil, this is my friend Nick. Nick, Virgil.”

“Thank you, er… wow. Is that a Gen-1b with you? I thought they’d gotten rid of all of those.” 

“They tried,” Nick said dryly. “Could say I had a rude awakening on a junk heap. Very existential.”

“And self-aware as well? Without bio-engineering? Remarkable, remarkable.” Virgil grabbed a clipboard. “I wonder if I could do some tests-“

“Hold on there, doc,” Nate said quickly. “Firstly, it’s gonna be up to Nick. Secondly, we’re actually here for another favour. I uh. You were in Bioscience, right? I wonder if you ever heard of something called a Gack? I’ve been asked to find one.”

“You mean a G.E.C.K…. a Garden of Eden Creation Kit?” Virgil corrected. “Well, yes of course. Terraforming device, built by Future-Tec - part of Vault-Tec. The Institute still has records from its days as the CIT… quite sketchy, of course. Apparently every Vault was issued with two. But I gather that wasn’t true after all. There weren’t any G.E.C.K.s from your, er, that is to say, Vault 111. Probably um, because it wasn’t really meant to be self-sustaining.” 

“There’s another Vault in the Commonwealth, one that’s got a community of Vault dwellers in it. Vault 81. So it’ll have two? What happens if we take one? Does the Vault need two to function?”

“I don’t know,” Virgil sounded embarrassed. “I wasn’t really specialised in terraforming, so I never read anything more than the overview reports. You should be able to access reams of G.E.C.K. data from any general access Institute terminal, though. Apparently one of the previous Directors was very interested in G.E.C.K.s. That’s why he started investigating vaults in the first place. And how he found out about Vault 111.”

“… Well, this is awkward,” Nick said, as Nate coughed. 

“What? … Oh.” Virgil blinked at them. “Did you… the _Institute_? You did you... you _destroyed it_? Everything? I… why? What a phenomenal waste. Why? All those people-“

“I got out who I could,” Nate said quietly. “They’re at Boston Airport. But yeah. That’s why we need the G.E.C.K. - there was a reactor meltdown, and-“

“I…” Virgil tipped up his spectacles, rubbing at his eyes. “My God. This was partly my fault too, wasn’t it? I got that code that let you in. I opened the gates. I never thought. My God.”

“Doc,” Nick cut in sharply. “If you didn’t think this was gonna happen someday, you got another think coming. You ain’t lived on the Commonwealth itself. You don’t know how much suffering the Institute’s caused, how much fear. If it wasn’t the Brotherhood, it’d have been someone else, eventually. This way, we got out who we could, and we got a chance to finally move everyone forward without people getting kidnapped or assassinated at peace summits.”

“I… just… yes, I…” Virgil let out a choked laugh. “Well, you’re… how do you people say it? You’re shit out of luck. All the data was on Institute computers. And if you’ve turned that entire area into a blast zone, so much for that. But you mentioned there was a functional Vault out there? Try your luck there, then. My God.”

“Um,” Nate exhaled. “Also. If you wanted to, well. Join the others. At Boston Airport. They could probably use an extra doctor there. We’re pretty overwhelmed, and you’ve studied radiation effects, right? You could help. I’ve got evac from here in an hour.” 

“I’ll be seen as a traitor.”

“Maybe, but none of them know where I got the institute code from. Neither do the Brotherhood, actually. I protect my sources. Besides, even if they found out, so what? You never thought this was going to happen either. You could be like Doctor Li, coming back in from the outside to help.” 

“I… yes. Give me some time to pack. I suppose I have a responsibility then,” Virgil said wanly. “My God. Did you really have to… No. I really should have known.” He turned away angrily, and started to pack things into a case. 

“Need help?” Nick asked.

“No.” Virgil, Nate noticed, with a dull start, was in tears. “No. You’ve all done more than enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Refs:  
> US Military lingo http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/12/04/248816232/u-s-military-lingo-the-almost-definitive-guide
> 
> Hmm I wonder why I didn’t get the quest to kill Virgil from Kells? Or the ghouls mission? :o Maybe I should’ve talked to everyone more. But anyway, Virgil is still alive and a human again in my game. 
> 
> While I’m writing this fic and cross referencing with the wiki, I’m beginning to realize more and more how many side quests I seemed to have randomly missed XD;; just by trying to be friends with everyone until the last moment… Might have to do a reload and a walkaround.


	5. Chapter 5

ii.

Kells had objected vehemently to Arthur’s decision to take a look at the growing settlement without a full armed escort, but Arthur had been dismissive. If he couldn’t defend himself against a group of civilians with existing Brotherhood security already in place, then he didn’t deserve to be the Elder.

Knight Captain Cade accompanied him, occasionally stifling yawns. Cade had slept the sleep of the dead for a day, and had crawled out of the Prydwen alongside Arthur still looking visibly exhausted. “The medical situation is mostly stable save for a few critical cases, and of course the other pregnancy is still at a delicate stage,” he reported, between yawns, as they visited the converted supermarket. “Curie, that is to say, the Sentinel’s robot, has been very useful. She synthesised a sort of vaccine out of mutfruit and taters and RadXs. It’s had a stabilising effect on the refugees’ digestive systems.” 

“Impressive.” Arthur glanced over at the robot in question. 

He had never particularly felt comfortable around the Mr Handy models: floating, silver bulbous spheres larger than a human head that sprouted appendages depending on their purpose. Many, even the gardener robots that he had seen puttering around the growing mutfruit field, looked vaguely sinister. This particular Mr Handy robot was deftly writing on a clipboard while administering something to a patient through a syringe. He looked away. 

“As to our supplies… sorry sir,” Cade stifled another yawn. “We’re on a shoestring for medical. We lost another one of the older people in the night. He was on something that Doctor Li called ‘dialysis’ treatment for an existing and incurable disease. Unfortunately we couldn’t come up with a substitute in time.”

“Was it infectious?”

“No. Not that Doctor Li said.”

“Good,” Arthur said indifferently. “Any other problems? What about food and water?”

“We’re good on water, now that all the purifiers are up and functioning… we even have enough water for storage aboard the Prydwen. As to food, we’re still heavily reliant on the other Minutemen settlements until the fields here get up to speed, but the situation is improving. The Sentinel arranged for an entire settlement to be transplanted here via vertibirds, along with their crops. ‘Graygarden’, I believe it was. Some sort of robot-only crop field: it wasn’t as though those Mr Handys were eating their own crops anyway, so they had a large surplus. That’s helped.”

“Good.” Nate had turned out to be just as resourceful as Arthur thought he would be. “The yield of the new fields. Is it being rationed out?” 

“The surplus is going to the Prydwen, yes-“ Cade paused as an older woman in military fatigues and a rifle at her back jogged up to them, her jaw set tightly, her eyes narrowed and suspicious. “Ah. Sir, this is Ronnie Shaw of the Minutemen, the overseer of this settlement… they’ve been calling it New Tesla. Ronnie, this is Elder Arthur Maxson.” 

“Huh. You the boss of the tinheads?” Ronnie looked Arthur over, brash as you please. “Funny. You’re far younger than I thought you would be.”

Arthur scowled at her, biting down on his retort. “It seems we’ll be working together more often,” he said evenly. 

“Yeah? About that.” Ronnie set her hands on her hips. “Might be there’s something ‘bout the question of food and supplies that we need to chat about.” 

Cade grimaced. “Ronnie… we’ve already talked about this…” 

“I know we have, Cade. But fair’s fair. We’re stretched thin and the General’s been sent packing on some special mission. ‘Meantime, our other settlements, y’know, those that are actually _sending you surplus_ , are getting raided and harassed by the usual suspects, and we can’t send help. Croup Manor even got its crop burned down yesterday by super mutants. D’you see a hole in the supply cycle there?” 

“I’ll speak to the Sentinel about this,” Arthur said dismissively, “But as far as I’m concerned, those are Minutemen settlements, not Brotherhood. Your ‘General’ has been excessively clear to us that there is an existing difference.” 

“Fuck that,” Ronnie growled. “Who knows where the General is right now-“ 

Her words were drowned out by the sudden growing roar of approaching vertibird engines, and as Arthur glanced out of the supermarket, he saw for a moment the distinctive, unfinished face of Nate’s pet synth, holding on to its ridiculous hat and peering out over the edge of the vertibird at the settlement below. The vertibird swung around, heading to Boston Airport proper to land and fuel up, and Ronnie started to laugh, her barks of mirth drowned out by the roar of engines.

“Well, speak of the devil.” 

They found Nate on his way to the Boston Airport perimeter, trailing the pet synth, the dog, and an odd looking human in a tattered lab coat. Arthur stared at the human - his face was swollen at the edges, as though suffering from some sort of disfiguring disease or allergic reaction, and he was clearly dejected, his eyes fixed on the floor, constantly adjusting the spectacles on his nose.

“Elder,” Nate greeted them. “Hey Ronnie. This is, uh, this is Doctor Virgil. He’s going to help out at the settlement. Ronnie, could you tow him over to Doctor Li and Curie please? I’ve got a Knight who’d bring over his gear once we’ve de-radded it.”

“Another doctor? Sure, why not.” Ronnie nodded at Virgil. “Well, you come along with me then. General, I’m going to need you to clear something up with King Tinhead here, though. Maybe explain to him why them tinheads expecting us to give them free food, but refusing to lend a hand to help out with raiders is not a valid relationship starter, eh?” 

“Oh my God,” Nate muttered, and wiped a hand over his face. Arthur scowled at Ronnie, but she merely smirked at him and grabbed Virgil by the elbow, all but frogmarching him back towards the settlement. 

“Nate uh, maybe you call me when you need me,” the pet synth said hastily, and scooted off after Ronnie. The dog wagged its tail, sniffed Arthur’s coat, and wagged its tail again, panting. Someone with an odd sense of humour, perhaps Nate, had given it a pair of goggles, a green bandana and a strange harness, and the overall look was eccentric rather than endearing, in Arthur’s opinion.

“Let’s talk aboard the Prydwen,” Arthur suggested.

“Good idea. I think Captain Banks wants, as she told me, ‘a fuckin’ stiff drink after that fuckin’ shitstorm’, and we need to refuel anyway.” 

Aboard the vertibird they took to fly up, the dog lay its muzzle over Arthur’s lap, panting happily when Arthur scratched behind its ears. “Funny,” Nate said, sitting opposite Arthur on the deck, “I never figured out why Dogmeat likes you so much. Do you bribe him on the side or something?”

“ _I_ never figured out why you called him ‘Dogmeat’,” Arthur shot back. “Surely there are a great many more appropriate names for a dog. Especially a dog like this.” ‘Dogmeat’ was a beautiful animal, sleek and showing no signs of mutation, all powerful, functional muscle, built for companionship and war. Arthur even felt a little covetous sometimes.

“Says the man whose big-ass ship is called the ‘Prydwen’. Seriously? Couldn’t you have maybe called it something like ‘Relentless’, or-“ 

“The ‘Prydwen’ is the name of King Arthur’s ship,” Arthur growled. “It’s a pre-war myth.” 

“I know about King Arthur,” Nate let out a startled laugh. “You know his wife cheats on him with his best buddy right? Also, if you wanted to rock the King Arthur vibe, why not call it ‘Excalibur’?”

“I didn’t name the Prydwen.”

“Ah, there you go. I didn’t name Dogmeat either. Did I, boy. Did I? Who’s a good boy?” The dog wagged its tail furiously, hearing its name, though it didn’t go over to its master, staying at Arthur’s heels as they docked aboard the Prydwen and headed to the command deck. 

“Who’s the newcomer?” Arthur asked, once they were there. Nate had sunk down on one of the benches, fighting yawns, Dogmeat lying down at his feet. 

“Sorry sir. Really tired. Virgil? He’s ex-Institute. Had some moral objections, ran away. Brought him back to the fold because we’re short on doctors.”

“One of your sources, I presume?” Nate had always been cagey about where he had acquired Institute information. Having to protect renegade scientists in hiding _would_ explain his evasiveness.

“Yeah. He wanted to be left alone before, I respected that. But after what happened… I went to talk to him because I thought he could help out here. And I wanted to see if he knew anything about the G.E.C.K., just in case. He’d come good on other questions before.”

“And?”

“Not his area of expertise, it seems. Said that all the good info was in general access terminals in the Institute,” Nate said dryly. “Maybe bombing out that reactor was a bit of an overkill move after all, hm? You know, when I first jumped all of you in there, I _kinda thought_ that we were just going to take over the premises. Not _blow it all to hell_. You guys are the tech hoarders. I would’ve thought the blow-it-to-hell option would be more of a Railroad thing.”

Arthur scowled. “It was a decision I made upon looking at the Institute firsthand. It was clear that technology had run rampant. Everything in there was corrupt.”

“Must be nice,” Nate said wearily, “To see the world in black and white.”

“The moral objections that our new ‘friend’ has. What were they?” Arthur challenged. 

Nate stared at his hands, then he finally exhaled. “He was studying the super mutant virus. The Institute started using human experiments. People they picked off the Wasteland. They wanted to understand the structure of the FEV virus or something. Maybe find a cure. He objected to using people for it. Sabotaged the project and left.” 

“There you go,” Arthur shot back. “I rest my case. I know it was a difficult decision to make,” he added stiffly, “And that the Director was… the Director was your son. But we’ve rescued who we could. And the Institute may have made advances in technology. But they still kidnapped people, replaced them. Experimented on them. Sent their synths to murder towns. Proctor Ingram extracted what she could from their memory banks. Once the data is decoded, we could rebuild what good they may have done-” 

“Don’t make it sound like you actually care about the world,” Nate growled. “I _know_ you don’t. It’s not your ‘primary mission’, yeah? Look. Back then, when _I_ was in the Army, we sure as hell needed a lot of supplies to keep everyone fed. Especially since eating MREs for anything more than a month at a stretch is sure to make for a lot of unhappy people out there. But we didn’t force farmers to hand over supplies, or expect them to do it out of patriotism. We _paid_ them. Simple logic, right? Army pays the best, so farmers send over the best.” 

“We can’t afford to pay a stipend. As it is, the cost of upkeeping the Prydwen and the power sources for the vertibirds, the Prydwen and power armour-“

“Maybe not,” Nate interrupted. “But helping out now and then when settlements get raided might help! Don’t you get it? If there are no more settlements, there’d be no more food! What is _wrong_ with you people?”

Arthur let out a deep breath, turning on his heel to stare out of the glass arced windows that overlooked the Commonwealth. It was either that or try to punch Nate in the jaw, and Arthur had seen Nate perform firsthand in a combat situation - that wouldn’t have turned out well for either of them. “Some time ago, Proctor Teagan approached you about creating Brotherhood-affiliated settlements.”

“And I said ‘no’, because Preston and I had already approached most of the settlements to work them into a coalition, trust was at a premium, and I didn’t want to rock the boat. Is _that_ the problem? All I’m asking is for the Brotherhood to maybe lend a helping hand now and then if the settlements get into trouble. Why do you care if they’re flying a flag of a different colour? Hell, usually, any kinda cloth just gets turned into bedding-”

“More than ten years ago,” Arthur said quietly, “The first major splinter in the Brotherhood came when an Elder led his chapter to the Capital Wasteland, where he proceeded to prioritise helping the settlers over undertaking the Brotherhood’s primary mission.”

“Sounds like a straight up decent guy.”

“Some of the Brotherhood felt that he was prioritising the natives over the Brotherhood itself. Others tried to emulate him, calling him selfless. A splinter in ideology began to take place. Caught in the middle, the Elders tried for a compromise. Elder Lyons would remain as Elder; the Citadel would remain the D.C. Brotherhood HQ. But all support from the West Coast would be cut off.”

“Ah…”

“Over the years he bled supplies… bled away whole factions of people within the Brotherhood itself. You’ve met some of them - Proctor Teagan, Captain Banks. They called themselves the Outcasts, and felt that Lyons had abandoned the original directive, and they departed with power armour, tech, equipment, as much gear as they could carry. They sundered the Brotherhood. Crippled it. Barely able to support itself, let alone the settlements that they tried to protect, the D.C. Brotherhood was nearly destroyed. Worse, the Outcasts became little better than raiders. Very powerful raiders.”

“Heard you kicked their ass and brought them back in to the fold.” 

“It was a difficult war. But more than that,” Arthur added flatly, “I leveraged my family name to repair ties with West Coast leadership. I’m the last Maxson - they can’t ignore that. But they’re watching me very closely, believe me. So that’s where we stand now, do _you_ understand? Bringing back the Outcasts, repairing ties with West Coast - all that was just within the last few years. It could all go wrong again. _Particularly_ if they think that I’m just about to repeat history.”

“Finding and hoarding tech, I get that,” Nate said slowly. “Preventing people from building the big nukes again, keeping stuff like Liberty Prime out of the hands of raiders, sure. Stopping the wrong people from using certain tech - hell, I feel that way whenever I see a super mutant try to tackle me with a mini nuke. But what’s the point? You can’t eat tech. Like it or not, you do need people. Besides, where do you think you’re going to get new recruits from?”

“That-“

“I’m not asking you guys to patrol the farms 24/7. But the Brotherhood’s _already_ blanketing the Commonwealth with vertibird patrols and randomly engaging in firefights with super mutants and raiders as it is. Not to mention… last week? I saw a couple of vertibirds trying to see how gently they could wing tap a yao guai on the back on a single pass. Very messy.”

Arthur pinched at the bridge of his nose. “I’m aware of that. Some of the younger jet jockey teams…” 

“You don’t get to criticise them, sir, _you’re_ only what, twenty and a spit yourself?” Nate was grinning still even as Arthur glanced over to glare at him. “Obviously people are getting bored. So. How about this. You find out who the most trigger happy teams are and hand them over to me. I’ll just… redirect their energy. Don’t call it Helping Dirty Settlers if you’ve got to play nice with the other Elders. Call it Combat Training. Stack it with Cade’s friends, maybe. Or people you don’t like. I’ll take whoever I can get if they can hold a gun and fly a vertibird. Don’t worry. I know how to make COs look good.”

“I’ll consider it,” Arthur conceded.

“Just a suggestion sir, you might have to consider it _very quickly_. Because if I have to pull defense duty on top of whatever I’m doing, and Quinlan starts breathing down my neck, I’m not above naming names. Now, if there ain’t anything else, I’m gonna go back to my room and pass out.” 

“Dismissed, Sentinel.”

IV.

Crossing from Sunshine Co Op to Goodneighbor meant a long, hard trek through half of the Commonwealth, and they skirted super mutant territories, raider grounds, and went to Diamond City to replenish supplies and check on Piper’s sister. Due to the lateness of the day, the shops in the Lower Grounds were already starting to pack up, neon lights flickering and sputtering into life where they sat as signage against huddled shacks, the streets slick and stinking from recent rain and sewage. Further beyond, along the high walls that surrounded the Market and the Lower Ground residences were the better-built, sturdier corrugated structures of the Upper Stands, where the wealthier lived. From where Danse stood, at the mouth of the Lower Grounds, the Mayor's office seemed to be fully dark, the external lift sitting quietly at the base. The first time that he had come to Diamond City with Nate, he remembered Nate laughing all of a sudden, ruefully, when they had come around and seen the external wall in the morning light. "Fucking _Fenway Park_ ," Nate had muttered, but had said nothing more.

Piper's sister was a towheaded girl in a heavy jacket, skirt and boots, perched on a crate, waving a folded up copy of Piper's paper, _Publick Occurrences_. The little girl whooped when she saw them heading into Diamond City Market, hopping off her soapbox to run up to Piper, grinning excitedly. 

“We sold almost all of that last run! Ready to print again soon!” 

“Great job, Nat. Hey, meet some of my friends - this big guy here is Danse, and this skinny rat is MacCready.” 

Nat stared keenly at the both of them, openly curious. To Danse’s surprise, MacCready actually smiled warmly and went down on a knee, holding out a hand. “Hey kid. I’m Skinny Rat.” 

She giggled in delight, shaking his hand, even as Piper raised her eyebrows. “You all hunting ‘nother story? Ooh! Where’s Nate? He’s real nice,” she confided. “Gave me a box of sugar bombs once.” 

“So that’s it,” Piper groaned. “You were hyperactive for _days_.”

“You like the vanilla ones or the chocolate ones?” MacCready asked.

“Nobody likes the vanilla ones, dummy.”

“That’s right!” MacCready agreed. “Now we can be friends forever.” 

“Friends forever,” Nat decided firmly.

“Oh God,” Piper muttered. “What have I done?”

“Somehow I’m entirely unsurprised that they’re on the same wavelength,” Danse told Piper. 

“I’m going to go get myself some noodles, then head to the taphouse,” MacCready pushed himself up to his feet. “Catch up again in the morning here?”

“Eight hundred hours,” Danse agreed. 

“Nobody counts time that way, tinhead. Make it after breakfast and we’re set.” 

“Power Noodles!” Nat said, excited again. 

“Yeah. How about I get you a bowl? Celebrate our beautiful new friendship.” 

“Don’t get back too late,” Piper said, resigned, when Nat looked beseechingly at her. “Or get into trouble. As to you,” Piper added, as Nat ran off on MacCready’s heels, “I guess you can stay over in the shop. We’ve got a couch.”

“Thanks. I’m going to resupply first-“

“Don’t say that,” Piper said quickly, dropping her voice. “Just… act normal, OK? Diamond City’s still on edge, what with the Mayor turning out to be a synth. Just. Act. Normal.” 

“This _is_ normal.” 

“Uh, on second thoughts, I’ll go with you and you can maybe talk as little as possible.” 

“I’ve been to Diamond City before,” Danse pointed out.

“Yeah, in power armour. I heard you clomping around behind Nate in the market.” Piper snorted. “You guys are _so_ good at being subtle. C’mon. Let’s do the rounds.”

After trading up for ammunition and supplies, they sat down at Power Noodles for a bowl each. Nat had already gone home, while MacCready had disappeared, presumably to head to the taphouse for a drink. As they waited for their food, Piper said, in a low voice, “You know, maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

“What is?”

“The memory den thing. You.” Piper glanced around hastily, but they were the only customers at Power Noodle - it was growing late, and the other shops in the market were closing up for the day. “I mean. D’you really want to know? What’s real and what’s not?”

“Of course I do.”

“Why?”

Why? Danse frowned, momentarily blindsided by the direct question. “Why not?” 

“I can’t imagine what it’s like, but… I mean, does it matter? Finding out? When maybe nothing good can come of it?”

“What about you?” Danse countered. “It’s a hard life being a news reporter. Why do you keep chasing the truth, even though nothing good might come out of it for yourself?”

“Got me there,” Piper offered him a quick, hard smile. “I kinda hope Nat doesn’t turn out like me, most days.”

“I don’t see what’s wrong with it if she does. It’s a fine profession.”

“Living like this, always on the edge, always checking my shadow…” Piper shook her head. “I don’t want that life for her.”

“The Institute’s gone now.”

“Not all of it. That’s why we’re even here, yeah?” Piper sighed. “I’m just… look. You do right by Nate, and so, I think you’re all right. You’re sure as hell far more decent than some other people I know. Actual people, even. You wanna rescue the, uh, other Danse, sure. I mean, why not. I wanna know what they did to everyone else too. But to want to know everything…? I don’t know if _I_ would want to. And I’m a reporter.”

“It’s important to me,” Danse said carefully. “And I want to do it out of respect for everyone whom I’ve met and valued. I owe it to them to find out when the deception started. But I also owe it to myself. To… both of me.” 

“Damn but you’re as uncompromising as a rock sometimes. Wonder what the boss sees in you.” 

“It’s a source of mystery even to me, Piper,” Danse began, then he looked up sharply. MacCready was running back towards them, skidding around the corner into the market, then slowing down to a brisk jog, shaking his head slightly as Danse’s hand started to go for his rifle. 

“What lit a fire under your ass?” Piper asked, as MacCready came to a stop beside them.

“Goodneighbor, that’s what,” MacCready said, in a hushed voice. “Seems it got attacked days ago. Attacked and overrun. By _synths_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Refs:  
> https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/3twp5c/major_spoilers_so_er_shaun/ This hilarious topic outlines every problem I have with the Institute. 
> 
> Super mutants tackling you with mini nukes: My Fucking GOD. lol


	6. Chapter 6

5.0.

Breakfast aboard the Prydwen was always grim. A sergeant he’d known once had said that the food in forward op bases were like closed shitloops: shit went in, got processed around, then got shit out. Nate ate just enough of the unidentifiable gruel to stop being hungry, fed the rest to the far less discerning Dogmeat under the mess table, and hauled ass over to the flight deck. He’d gotten a curt memo on his terminal in the morning from Kells, stating that the ‘volunteers’ he’d ‘requested’ were going to meet him at 900 hours on the flight deck, and military life had taught Nate that it was always best for the CO of a bum op to be embarrassingly early.

The morning breeze was stiff and the catwalk groaned and creaked under the metal-clad blimp, swaying gently in the air, cables occasionally whining softly under the strain. Vertibirds sat silent in their cradles, and the occasional technician scooted along the main walkway towards a sleeping charge. Nate had to hold on to his cap as he ducked out of the main flight deck, nodding absently as the Knight on guard duty offered him a polite greeting. He could see the large blip of Liberty Prime far below, patrolling in a wide arc around Boston Airport and New Tesla, with orderly tiny blips pottering around the fortified space of the Airport, manning towers, running patrols. Further away, New Tesla looked quieter, with skeleton security and everyone asleep, the green, shrublike mutfruit trees attended to only by Mr Handys. 

Unfortunately, it turned out that at least one ‘volunteer’ was well aware of the psychological advantage of being even earlier than an early CO. Paladin Brandis stood on the catwalk between the vertibird nests, already in full power armour, stiffly at attention, helmet tucked against a hip. 

“Oh hell,” Nate said, resigned.

“Morning, sir,” Brandis said, and his eyes twinkled briefly with amusement. 

Paladin Brandis had been in the op preceding Danse’s that had gone to the Commonwealth on a survey: his team had been scoured away by circumstance and accident, and half mad from grief and guilt, Brandis had hidden out by himself in a recon bunker until Nate had traced him and persuaded him to return. Now that his gray hair was shaved back, his beard trimmed, the wild man Nate had found in the bunker was unrecognisable. 

“Volunteered, did you?”

“If that’s what we’re calling it, sir.” 

“Outstanding.” Nate leaned back against a safety rail, Dogmeat yawning widely before curling up again. Brandis was an old hand at this game: he stood immovable, patient and silent - he probably would’ve stood there until the end of the world without a peep if he had to. 

The rest of the ‘volunteers’ were probably about what Nate would’ve expected, streaming over in drips and drabs. Pretty young Scribe Haylen was next, fresh-faced, her goggles worn up over her BoS hood, offering Nate a quick flash of a grin before she saluted and then stood at attention next to Brandis. Next was Knight Rhys, sour-faced, avoiding his eyes, shuffling his feet. Then Knight Silva, an unexpectedly petite, hispanic woman with her dark hair buzzed down to her scalp, also in power armour, cradling her helm at her hip, initiates Ella and Anderson behind her. And finally, a pair of skinny girls who were probably the youngest of the group, one a freckled redhead, the other an Asian girl with a snub nose, both already in full jet jockey gear. 

Nate made a show of checking the names off his pipboy and reading them out in a bored tone, finishing with, “Captain O’Meara… Captain Tanaka.” The jet jockeys squirmed, abashed. “Other than Paladin Brandis here, you’re all late. Great start. Doesn’t give me hope.”

“We were _five minutes early_ ,” Rhys muttered. 

“Sorry, didn’t catch that, Knight. Did you say something?”

“No sir.”

“As you’ve all guessed by now,” Nate said cheerfully, “You’re all here because you’re all in the shit, in some form or other. Maybe it’s situational… or maybe because some of you got into the wrong proximity with the wrong people at the wrong time, or maybe you were seen wing tapping the local wildlife with vertibirds-“

“That was just once!” Tanaka yelped. 

“Show some respect when your CO is speaking,” Brandis growled. Tanaka reddened and ducked her head. 

“Seems the Brotherhood has no secrets, so you lot probably know what you’re in for. On one hand, we need food. On the other hand, some assholes out there are burning the crop fields that are giving us food. Seems to be a obvious fucking problem with an obvious fucking solution to me, but things are always FUBAR in the land of high command, so. The official story is, you’re all here to engage in combat exercises. The unofficial story is, you’re all here to pull _everyone’s_ weight in terms of local asskicking. Clear?” 

“Yes sir,” Brandis said, and pointedly eyeballed the others until a chorus of ‘yes sirs’ of varying levels of enthusiasm could be heard, with Rhys’ at the lowest ebb. 

“Naturally,” Nate added, “On top of this, given that a great number of local assholes seem to hole up in defensible old buildings with good tech, you’re also going to be running the usual search and recover missions. We’re going to keep the food supply running, kick ass, shower Quinlan with technical documents… but everything else we get out of this counts as spoils of war. This is not a new job. It’s a new job _on top of_ your old job, so if you get more than normal out of it, fine by me.” 

This time the ‘yes sirs’ were slightly more enthusiastic. Given the rigidly rationed supply chain, it wasn’t surprising to Nate that the opportunity to loot-and-keep rather than loot-for-Teagan was going to be considered welcome. 

“We’ve got two vertibirds, so that’s two teams. Team O’Meara: Brandis, Haylen, Ella, Brandis has command. Team Tanaka: Silva, Rhys, Anderson, Silva has command.” 

“Sir,” Rhys objected gruffly, “I’ve got two months’ seniority on Knight Silva.”

“Two months?” Nate scoffed. “So what? She’s a Knight, you’re a Knight. More importantly, she’s a Knight who happens to have proved that she’s able to, hm, explosively complete orders without giving me any lip. So let this be a lesson to you, Knight Rhys: Life’s already hard. _Don’t be an asshole_. We clear?”

Rhys was bright red. “Clear. Sir.”

“Tune in to the Minutemen radio for updates. If you have to contact the Minutemen in any way, do it through Ronnie Shaw at New Tesla, but I don’t really see why this would ever be necessary. When there aren’t any settlements in need of help, your CO has discretion. At the end of the week, we’ll tally up kills and spoils, and I’ll judge the result. Losers buy winners a round of drinks. Clear?” 

This was the breaking point: Silva stared straight at Nate, uneasy, while Rhys glared at his boots. Haylen tried to smile comfortingly, while Brandis looked carefully blank, and the initiates were openly confused. Then Tanaka suddenly punched O’Meara in the arm. “Hell yeah, Team Tanaka!” she whooped. “We are so kicking your freckled ass!” 

“Fuck you,” O’Meara snapped indignantly, glaring at the other Captain, “ _I’ve_ got the Paladin! Suck it!” 

As the others stared at the squabbling Captains, startled, Brandis offered Nate a wink. “We’re kind of like the ‘problem children’, don’t you think sir?” Brandis asked wryly. 

“Problem Children? I like it. Let’s make that official, Paladin.” Thus were squad names born and made.

V.

There was no point running over to Goodneighbor while they were all tired out, so they rested in Diamond City and set off early instead, MacCready taking point, Piper scribbling furiously into a notepad, Danse bringing up the rear. Past the super mutant hotspots, the way east was suspiciously quiet, and it was starting to make MacCready antsy.

“What the hell are you writing about anyway?” MacCready whispered to Piper, when they had to circle around a raider blockade, just in case. There wasn’t any chatter that Danse could pick out, but they were on a hurry and it was best not to tempt fate. 

“The _story_ , obviously,” Piper hissed back. “I’m thinking ‘Institute Wars: Revenge of the Synths!’ Whaddya think?”

“I think that maybe you could save the writing for when we’re actually not walking through a raider backyard?”

“Shh! So many ideas. Must write. Can’t think.” 

“We’re so dead,” MacCready told Danse matter-of-factly. 

Danse shrugged. It wasn’t as though they’d encountered any hostiles as yet anyway. Morning had dawned reluctantly over the heart of the Commonwealth, cutting shadows over twisted metal wreaths, shattered concrete, overgrown parks and rubble-choked roads, the corpses of rusted old cars, abandoned, their sleeping owners long picked clean to the bone. The Commonwealth was never fully silent, not even like this: wind whistled through empty hallways, and structures moaned and grumbled under the weight of futile years. Sometimes Danse tried to imagine what the Commonwealth was like, pre-2077. He had seen something of it in Nate’s face, the first time he had accompanied Nate out to Diamond City. The dull disbelief; all that despairing, resigned horror. The world had been beautiful once, it seemed. 

As they got closer to Goodneighbor, Danse signalled for MacCready to scout further ahead, and thankfully, Piper put her notebook away, checking the grounds, even the roofs, with practiced, careful scans, keeping close to any walls. She was an old hand at this, then, even for a civillian. That was a relief. 

They were close to the next turn that would take them to a street facing the first Goodneighbor sign and outer wall fence when MacCready jogged back, looking grim. “Not good,” he whispered. “I climbed up to get a look over the walls. Ground’s crawling with armed synths. Don’t see any humans. Live humans, that is. Dead’s been left where they fell. Mostly Hancock’s goons.”

“How many synths?”

“That I could see? At least five.” 

“How good are you with that rifle?”

“Could probably take out half before the rest swarm my position, sure. I said the magic words ‘at least’ and ‘that I could see’ right?” MacCready frowned at him. “Is that some sort of standard Brotherhood plan of attack? Kick down the door, all guns blazing? I don’t like that plan. Unlike you, I am 100% squishy human, capable of bleeding copiously.”

“It’s something Nate would’ve done,” Piper pointed out.

“Nate? Naw. He’s a crazy good sniper. He’d have snuck around, sniped some, potted the rest, _then_ kicked down the door. Now that’s a better strategy.” MacCready paused. “Though it probably needs Nate.”

“He’s not here,” Danse pointed out firmly. “So we need a Plan B.”

“This is all really exciting,” Hancock’s hoarse voice drifted down from a floor above. “I’m positively _dying_ to find out what’s your Plan B.” 

Piper actually flinched, stifling a yelp. Danse shaded his eyes, glancing up. “Oh. You’re still alive.”

“I can feel your sincere concern from way up here,” Hancock said dryly, leaning his elbows on the window sill. “Brings a tear to my eye. Or it would, if I still had tear ducts.”

“Glad to see you too, Hancock,” Piper grinned.

The self-appointed ghoul mayor of Goodneighbor looked none the worse for wear, his wrinkled, pitted skin drawn back over the cavernous skull of his face with a crater where the nose had been, tucked under a rakish tricorne hat and a high-collared fuschia coat. “Hello the fucking cavalry. There’s only three of you? Well fuck. C’mon up, I guess. Fahrenheit? Open the door.”

The ‘door’ turned out to be a sewer manhole, and Fahrenheit was a tall human woman, red-headed, heavily armoured, expressionless as she pulled the manhole cover back in place and led them down a narrow dry tunnel, lit only by the lantern at her hip. The sewage route was blocked up with refuse and rubble behind them, and it smelled only of stale air; whatever had once flowed through here remained only as discoloured stains on the stone channel between two walkways. 

Someone with some military sense had fashioned the approach to Hancock’s hideout like a murder room, with a single channel and a fortified blockade beyond, manned by three people with rifles and a turret. At Fahrenheit’s wave, they nodded them through, and Danse followed Fahrenheit up a narrow set of stairs to an abandoned cellar, old dusty crates still racked up along the stone flanks. 

“You people have been holed up here all this while?” Piper asked, notebook back in her hand.

“Talk to the boss,” Fahrenheit told her curtly, and fell silent. 

Hancock was holding court in an upper room, lounging on a fraying couch that had seen far better days. Most of the windows had been freshly boarded up, and melted candles and the remnants of consumed rations littered the few upright tables. It looked to Danse as though this was a safehouse that Hancock had set up a while ago as a fallback position in case of an attack. The rooms they had passed on the way up from the second floor had been occupied, some by people who seemed to be civvies, ghouls and humans both, shocked and quiet, some by people armed with rifles and submachine guns. Somewhere, there was the quiet, pained moaning of the injured, muffled and weak. The air smelled rank, of too many people packed into a single location for too long. 

“Drink?” Hancock asked them, waving at a whisky bottle and some discoloured glasses on a rickety old coffee table. Danse shook his head, though MacCready poured himself a murky shot, pulling up a stool. Piper settled in an armchair, pencil poised. 

“You guys got our message?” Hancock asked. “Or did you just happen to want to stop by on a social call?”

“Heard about the attack in Diamond City,” MacCready said. “Thought we might come by and see if you were dead. I like your hat, was hoping to get my hands on it.”

“Ha, ha.” Hancock sighed. “Okay, I guess this means that Jonesy didn’t make it south. I was kinda hoping that our mutual friend might send over some of his new tinhat friends in one of those big damn birds. Instead I get a reporter, a merc, and an ex-tinhat who didn’t even bring his power armour. Great. When I decided to go help our Great Leader save the world, I kinda didn’t expect to come home and watch the consequences literally kick down my front door.”

“Nate’s busy with other matters,” Danse said firmly. “And unfortunately, despite Nate’s new rank, I don’t believe that Elder Maxson would be willing to spare Nate any manpower to rout synths from a ghoul town. Or if he does, he’ll probably set up a base there and you’ll all be displaced anyway.” Goodneighbor was in a useful strategic location, close to Diamond City.

“True. Good point. Maybe it’s a good thing that Jonesy didn’t make it.” Hancock shrugged, clearly disinterested either way in the fate of his messenger. “Question is, are _you_ willing to help us kick synths out of a ghoul town, seeing as, (a), you’re a synth, and (b), you think we’re freaks?” 

Danse kept his tone even, leaning hard on his temper. “I’m on a mission to hunt down renegade synths. _And_ I’ve got something that I need in Goodneighbor.”

“Yeah? Like what?” 

“He’s got business with the Memory Den. Say, Amari didn’t kick it, did she?” MacCready asked, as an afterthought. “‘Cos we kinda need her.”

“Nope. Not that we know of,” Hancock amended. “The synths kinda stormed the Memory Den and took everyone in there hostage. Far as I saw, the only people they killed were my guards, after which they piled the bodies in the courtyard, like you noticed. Assholes. They haven’t ventured out of Goodneighbor since, even though they probably know we’re in here. So. Now what.”

“You guys been sitting here for days with no plan?” Piper asked skeptically. “What, just hoping to be rescued?”

“Hey, I’m a mayor, not a soldier. But now we actually do have a professional soldier here, so, let’s hear it,” Hancock said brightly. “Paladin Danse’s Awesome Plan to Take Back a ‘Ghoul Town’ with Minimal Casualties, Hopefully With More Subtlety Than What I’ve Already Heard.”

“The Brotherhood can totally do subtlety… _not_ ,” MacCready rolled his eyes. “By the way, if your plan is to go back to the Co Op and pick up your power armour, we’ll be _old_ by the time you get back here.” 

“I do miss my power armour,” Danse said, deadpan. “But that aside. How much manpower do we have, and how many hostiles are there?” 

“Answer is ‘not much’ and ‘way lots’, respectively,” Hancock nodded sagely. “Frontal assault, very bad idea, just saying.”

“We’ve got five injured, one with a broken leg, two with just scrapes,” Fahrenheit reported briskly. “So that’s about two we got to leave holed up in here and maybe eight people including KL-E-0 who’re combat-ready. Assaultron,” she explained. “The rest are civilians whom I wouldn’t trust in a firefight. As to hostiles, there’s the five you’ve seen patrolling the yard, and the rest are in the buildings… estimated seventeen min in total. All of them are armed. Most of those are robot-looking ones like what you’ve seen in the yard. But we’ve got at least three who look human, and seem to be controlling the rest.” 

“Courser, or just Gen 3s?” Piper asked out aloud. 

“Got at least one Courser. Dark guy, short hair, sunglasses. Think I’ve seen him before somewhere with the boss, but I’m not too sure,” Hancock nodded. “Unless a Gen 3 wanted to play dress up in their funny coats.”

“That’s… very not awesome,” MacCready pulled a face. “Dark skinned guy, sunglasses… If that’s who I think it is, we are straight up shit creek without a paddle.”

“Not that I don’t agree with you as it is,” Hancock suggested, “But why?”

“‘Cos I might’ve met him before, that’s why. The boss and I went on a little job once while he was still feeling out the Institute. Recovering some synth what had gone nutso and become a raider or something. They sent some courser with us as a babysitter. Man. Watching that guy fight? Holy fuck.” 

“Maybe we do need backup then. Diamond City Security?” Piper asked. “I could pull in some favours-“

MacCready shook his head. “Won’t stand a _chance_.” 

“I have an idea,” Danse decided. “But there’s probably going to be some collateral damage to the town.” 

“Let me add that nuking the fuck out of my town is not what I was thinking of when I mentioned ‘subtlety’,” Hancock drawled.

“Is that park to the southwest still a no-go zone?”

“Well yeah, and you know why, and… hmm.” Hancock brightened up. “That’s a crazy idea. And I like it.”

“If you’re thinking what I’m thinking,” MacCready cut in, “It’s a stupid idea. But I also like it.”

“What?” Piper paused in the middle of her furious scribbling. “What are we doing?” 

“We,” Hancock said expansively, “Are going to go _fishing_.”


	7. Chapter 7

6.0.

Nate had been hoping to find Doctor Li in Boston Airport proper, as he didn’t want to show his face around New Tesla unless he really had to, but it turned out that she was bunking over in the new settlement. He dithered for a moment in the main hangar before chickening out and beckoning a hapless initiate over. Then he sat by a gen access terminal in what had once been the Secret Squirrel Liberty Prime hangar and tried reading through the top-level data that Proctor Ingram had already decoded and released on the network. Dogmeat sniffed around, barked, and promptly curled up and went back to sleep, hind legs twitching.

His eyes were starting to water a little by the time the initiate returned with a sour faced Doctor Li and Nick. Li was an Asian woman of indeterminate age, her hair tied today in a tight tail behind her head, cold eyes perched high over narrow nose. Her mouth, as always, was pursed in a thin line of disapproval, and she sniffed as Nate rose from the terminal to greet her. 

“Now what do you want?” Li asked, the moment the initiate was dismissed. 

“Good morning, Doctor. It turns out that our wires cross again,” Nate said, as cheerfully as he could. “I made a throwaway mention to Paladin Brandis that I’d been told to look for a G.E.C.K. by Quinlan, and he said that you’d worked on something called ‘Project Purity’, which used a G.E.C.K…? Funny how Quinlan _probably_ should’ve told me this in the first place.”

Li sighed. “I’m not on speaking terms with Proctor Quinlan.”

“And because of that he erased this maybe really important information from his brain or…? Good Lord, it’s really the Army all over again,” Nate muttered, resting a hip against the terminal desk and folding his arms. “Is the G.E.C.K. still at Project Purity, whatever it is?”

“Yes, and good luck extracting it,” Li scoffed. “Even if you could somehow get authorisation from the Elder… the G.E.C.K. is what supplies the Capital Wasteland with purified water. People _died_ to get it functional.” 

“Whoah, whoah, I wasn’t suggesting that we grab it if it’s that important, Jesus,” Nate said hastily. “All Brandis told me was that he thought you’d worked with one before. I was trying to look it up on the Prydwen’s database but it’s just reams of old history and technical speak.”

“… Before I discuss this any further,” Li said carefully, “Why don’t you explain to me exactly what this is about?” She smiled sharply, coldly. “The _last_ time I trusted you, you caused a catastrophic reactor failure in the middle of the Commonwealth, after all. Displaced and traumatised hundreds of people, including children-” 

“All right, I’ve had enough,” Nick began gruffly, but Nate held up a palm. 

“She’s right, Nick. Doctor Li, I swear to you I wasn’t told that causing a meltdown was the Elder’s intention. I thought the Brotherhood was just going to stage an armed takeover and get rid of the synths. Naive thinking, maybe. But yeah, at the end, it was my hand that put that device on the reactor. I’d already destroyed my son,” Nate said, with a harsh laugh. “What was one more thing? I wasn’t thinking.”

“Even if you’d stood down,” Nick said gruffly, “I was there too. Someone else would’a done it. And since we’d done an evac… look. I was all for burying it. All that misery. You haven’t been around up top here that long, the both of you. The fact of the Institute being there, it was destroying everyone up top. Nobody could trust anybody. Some people were killing each other on a hair trigger, thinking they were synths. Everyone was afraid. That’s a toxic thing to feel all the time.” 

Li curled her lip. “Wastelanders.” 

“Doctor, you can’t fool me there,” Nate said dryly. “You care more about those ‘dirty wastelanders’ than probably everyone in that damn big ship up there joined together.”

Li glowered at him, but Nate kept his smile up, and finally, she exhaled again, exasperated. “Your son,” she said finally, in an oddly different voice, softer. “I saw that memo, you know. He’d decided to thaw you out. Some of us, we knew why. He was dying and he had no heir. Bioscience was starting to splinter apart, some of the rest of us were unhappy with all the secrets - especially those like me, who had seen the outside.”

“He thawed me out because he wanted me to take over?” Nate shook his head slowly. “I’m a soldier. How the hell would that have worked? Why didn’t he just thaw me out earlier, take me in straight to the Institute? I might’ve been more inclined to do what he wanted.” 

“I guess he thought that your paternal feelings would persuade you to take over his life’s work regardless,” Li said dryly. “And turn a blind eye to everything else. Maybe he wanted to leave you there until he really needed a successor. Or he just wanted to see how you’d react, what you would do. How should I know? I’ve…” she hesitated. “I don’t know if I should be talking to you about this.”

“Go ahead, Doc. I can take it.”

“The thing is,” Li continued uncomfortably. “The Director was one of the reasons why I left Project Purity and went to the Institute. He was very charming at first. But I’d always thought there was something… strange, about him. Like the way he thought about things, about people. It was very cold. The way he grew up, as a donor, without parental figures… I think there was always something broken in there. He never really saw other people as _people_. They were all units. Test subjects. That’s the only way I can explain things like the FEV labs, the kidnappings, the replacement experiments…” Li trailed off. “Or maybe I’m trying too hard to explain it all to myself. Creator knows that I’ve seen people who didn’t go through all that and _still_ turned out to be psychopaths.” 

“… the pregnancy, it was pretty difficult for Nora,” Nate said, and his voice was distant even to his ears. “Medical technology had advanced quite a bit, but even then, it was touch and go. Shaun was… he was born really premature. First few weeks of his life, we couldn’t even touch him. He was in a glass box, fighting. I resigned from the Army. If my son was fighting for his life, I felt like I had to be there too. Nora and I, we put our whole lives on hold to be there. And it was worth it.” 

“When we could finally _hold_ him, bring him home…” Nate let out a shuddering breath. “Oh man. Everyone was over the moon. The whole street knew about it - our neighbors, our parents… It was like we’d won the war. It sure as hell felt like it. But it was still scary as hell. Every time he got even a little sick, we’d be scrambling to check his vitals. But he got bigger. Got stronger. Nora and I, we used to watch him sleep, and take turns imagining who he’d be when he grew up. We’d talk to each other about the things that he’d do, make bets. He’d already fought harder than most. We were sure that he could do anything.”

“And then… when I finally met him again, in the Institute, when I’d heard of all the things he’d done, talked to him… all I could think of was _My God. My God._ I was so _disappointed_.” Nate looked away, swallowing the hurt that welled within him, the weight of it. “I thought. Thank God Nora - Nora wasn’t there to see this. I thought - why the hell didn’t you kill me too? _You should’ve killed me too_.” 

“Nate,” Nick began awkwardly. “I… uh… Hell, I don’t know what to say-“

“Feel like I’ve rambled on abit there,” Nate forced a smile. His eyes stung, but thankfully, after a few deep breaths, he calmed down again. “Had to get it off my chest. Sorry Doc.”

Li’s expression was oddly frozen, and she ducked her head, as though in defeat. "All right, Sentinel,” she said quietly. “You’re hellishly good at pushing my buttons. And. I think there _is_ some good in you. There’s some bad too… you’re naturally suited for the Brotherhood, and that’s not a compliment coming from me. But I think you at least know when you’ve made a mistake. And you try to fix things instead of running away.” She offered a wan, mirthless smile. “That’s more than a lot of people whom I’ve known. Even the good ones.” 

“Ingram’s been decoding data from the Institute,” Nick noted. “Maybe I could take a look at the data dump. If they’re willing to hand it over to a dirty synth.”

“I doubt it,” Li observed. “But either way. I was questioned in great depth about my time with Project Purity and the G.E.C.K… so for a while when I was working up through Advanced Systems I was part of their G.E.C.K. division. We were collating data on the kits. Firstly, the gen data on the terminals wasn’t quite true. Very few of the Vaults actually got fully functional G.E.C.K.s - probably because the units were extremely expensive to produce.”

“I seem to be missing a bit of the memo here,” Nick said. “What the hell is a G.E.C.K.? It can purify water for a whole area, remove rads from a reactor failure? Sounds like mumbo jumbo magic to me.” 

“It’s a terraforming device,” Li explained briskly. “Looks like a small silver briefcase, has the word ‘G.E.C.K.’ on it. It has seeds, fertiliser, equipment - including a cold fusion power generator and a matter-energy replicator that reworks an area into energy and then back into a pre-codified molecular structure.”

“I don’t think I understood any of that past ‘generator’,” Nate admitted slowly. “So I find this… silver briefcase and then what? What do I plug it into?” 

“Creator give me the patience to deal with the military,” Li murmured. “You hand it to me, hopefully pristine, though I’ll settle for mostly unbroken.” 

“So if only a few vaults got them,” Nick added, “Do we know which? Vault 114 was unfinished, so I don’t think it’s got one. Virgil says yours didn’t either. Vault 81 might have a couple, but I don’t think fucking with their life support’s a good thing.” 

Li shook her head. “Vault 81 doesn’t have a G.E.C.K., just a very advanced purifier and integrated support system that needs constant maintenance to function - the Institute sent some synths to quietly investigate this early on, posing as traders. I remember the Director found the entire matter of that Vault very fascinating for some reason, and he decided to leave them alone. The Institute _did_ use what it learned from the integrated life support to improve the underground systems, though.”

“Probably didn’t have a G.E.C.K. because they were a ticking time bomb,” Nate recalled. “What with actually being some sort of experimental group for disease testing. Thankfully that never really triggered.”

“We’re shit outta luck though,” Nick pointed out. 

“Not necessarily,” Li said briskly. “I told you that I was part of the G.E.C.K. program - and that was before I became the Director of Advanced Systems. The Institute has a G.E.C.K… but not a fully functional one. The cold fusion power generator was scavenged a long time ago, though I think it was defective - we couldn’t quite get it to work.”

“So we’re back to square one,” Nate said, resigned. “Since the Institute is rubble.”

“We had offsite labs. Some connected through underground tunnels. Others, run only by synths, in out of the way pockets of the Commonwealth. Dangerous experiments could be conducted there by proxy in relative safety. Advances in fusion tech, for example. Or very delicate chemical reactions. The Director was interested in how far we could push the matter-energy replicator.” 

“Sooo… it’s broken?” Nick suggested.

“Why do you always jump straight to the worst case scenario?” Nate complained.

“Means I get disappointed a whole lot less often.”

“It’s not broken: those things were made for heavy use,” Li said flatly. “As far as I’m aware, it’s still out there. I don’t know the exact coordinates - when the Director decided to experiment with the replicator he moved the entire matter to Biomechanics. I argued for a while but in the end I gave up. Felt it was a dead end within the Institute anyway - we were self-sufficient as we were. And the Director was not in the least interested in recreating Project Purity for the Commonwealth.” 

“So… still back to square one.” Nick said, resigned, his yellow eyes glowing more brightly for a moment before dulling. 

“Not exactly.” Doctor Li smiled thinly. “I know roughly where it is. It’s in an old Vault - the same Vault where we found it in the first place. Within the Glowing Sea.” 

“… Captain Banks is not gonna like this,” Nate muttered.

VI.

To Danse’s annoyance, Hancock refused to leave all final decisions on the plan to an actual soldier, and since all available armed personnel only listened to Hancock, Danse was forced to compromise. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Hancock told him, “It’s that I _really_ don’t _fucking_ trust you. Seeing as, and I know I’ve mentioned this before, that (a) you’re a synth, and (b) you hate ghouls.”

“I don’t hate ghouls,” Danse muttered.

“But you won’t shed a tear if we all upped and died,” Hancock countered. “So forgive me if I don’t want you in charge of The Plan. No wait! Don’t bother attempting any forgiveness. You’d probably strain something.” 

“You. Are. _Really_. Starting to try my patience,” Danse growled. 

“What _I_ wanna know is, and maybe I should’a brought this up before, but uh, when I went on said previously mentioned run to bring home the nutso raider synth,” MacCready piped up, “The Courser babysitter actually knew some sort of spoken code that deactivated said nutso. Is that gonna be a problem, you guys think?”

“Well shit,” Hancock squinted at Danse. “You think Nate is gonna be pissed if we get his sexbot deactivated?”

“ _Guys_ ,” Piper hissed. “ _Seriously_.” 

“It’s a valid point,” Danse said evenly, “But I’ve encountered packs of synths and coursers before, and none of them have tried a code on me. But even if I do get deactivated in battle, the objective should be close enough to Goodneighbor by then.” 

“Maybe you could block up your ears,” MacCready suggested. “When we get close to Goodneighbor. Anyway. Rest of you jokers fought a Courser before? They shoot fast, shoot smart, and they got some kinda internal Stealth Boy.”

“Heard all the stories,” Hancock assured MacCready. “Don’t worry. I’ve got an idea about that. Been prepping since before all that shit with the Institute went down. In the meantime, everyone else know where they’ve got to be? Good? Okay, tough guy,” Hancock glanced over. “Time to Danse.” 

Danse pinched at the bridge of his nose, even as MacCready let out a startled burp of laughter and Piper groaned. “What?” Hancock snickered. “You guys don’t know how _long_ I’ve been holding that in. There’s shitloads more where that came from too.”

“Spare me,” Danse told him.

The streets outside the safehouse were still quiet, and Danse took a moment to take in a grateful breath of air. It wasn’t particularly fresh, not this deep in the urban wasteland, but at least it wasn’t as rank as within the safehouse. Hancock stared at him, but said nothing as they set out at a brisk pace towards the park.

Danse had learned about Swan’s Pond in a passing comment in Diamond City, and hadn’t thought very much about it, though he’d also overheard Nate muttering something once to Nick about having to ‘sneak out past that motherfucker to the Vault’. It hadn’t taken much logic to surmise that some sort of monster was lurking there, big enough to make trade routes circle around out of its way, and now that they were near the ramp of a slope, looking down towards the park, Danse could guess why. 

Swan’s Pond had once been a beautiful little urban park. There was a small pond beside an open shack, its corrugated roof rusting gently in the sun. A rotting white barge in the shape of a bird of some sort sat listing in the milky water, and there was a pavilion to the north, gently falling apart. Someone in the past had dumped barrels of toxic waste in the water and on the grounds, which still seeped greenish ooze onto the earth. Grass, baked brown, crept knee-tall around the soil, and the few trees that skulked around the park were long dead. 

“Here we are,” Hancock muttered. “Swan’s Fucking Pond.”

“Second thoughts?”

“Me? Nah. Everyone knows monsters don’t eat ghouls. Tearing them apart though, hm, maybe that’s another matter entirely.” 

“You didn’t need to come with me.”

“Think of me as the emergency bait. Stop it, Paladin. I’m starting to think that you actually care.” Hancock smirked. “My blushes.”

“Forget it,” Danse growled, trudging towards the lake. 

Once they were near the edges of the park, close to an abandoned APC, Hancock came to an abrupt stop. When Danse glanced curiously at the ghoul, Hancock muttered, “You don’t see it? Over there. Middle of the pond.” 

Danse shaded his eyes against the sun. Now that he _did_ look in the right direction, what looked like a darker shadow in the water and an upturned white wreck of a boat stayed still, not bobbing against the water or the breeze. “Super mutant behemoth?” he whispered back.

“Biggest one I ever saw. Though I heard you guys knocked out a really huge one at Fort Strong.”

“We had a vertibird and a support squad of Knights. Also, I was in power armour.”

Hancock patted Danse with mock-solemnity on the shoulder. “Well… it was nice knowing you, asshole.”

“Let’s just make a start.” Danse unslung his rifle, and climbed up onto the roof of the APC, taking careful aim. The first cold shot went wide, the rifle bucking back against his shoulder from the recoil, the beam earthing itself in the shack’s roof. The second shot hit the white ‘wreck’ front and centre. 

There was a subterranean, bubbling rumble, then the filthy water of the pond surged upwards in a cone of murky froth, dribbling off the monster that had emerged. The behemoth was _huge_ : it towered well over the shack as it lurched ashore, bellowing its rage, and as always, whenever Danse was this close to such abominations, he felt a shudder of pure disgust and hatred uncurl through him. Thickened and blocky and dense, its flesh bulbous and olive green, the hulking monster had somehow thought to wear part of a boat as armour, and dragged an anchor in its fist as a weapon, holding another boat up like a shield. It shook itself and roared again as Hancock fired off a shot in its direction, and then it glared at them, breathing in hoarse, furious bellowing gusts, and groped for a rock.

Hastily, Danse leveled another shot and pulled the trigger. The behemoth howled, wringing its burned fist, but as it tried to pick up the rock again, Danse fired again, the laser beam searing a gouge over the monster’s shoulder. It had enough. Baring wedge-like, yellowing teeth, it hunkered its head down and started a lumbering charge, the anchor dragging up sparks along the concrete, shaking the earth itself.

“Oh fuck!” Hancock started to back off, even as Danse leaped off the APC and motioned for a retreat, ducking aside hastily as another rock whistled past, too close for comfort. They traded fire, scrambling to keep ahead, dodging rocks, twisting around street corners, the behemoth’s bellows of fury echoing off the ruins, sundering the air. 

“C’mon, you big lunk!” Hancock yelled, and the ghoul was _laughing_ , the crazy creature. “I’m fucking here! Eat me! C’mon! Right here! Catch up, slow-ass!” 

The behemoth _shrieked_ , and abruptly started to charge forward, huge thighs pumping, head bowed. Hastily, Danse grabbed Hancock by the arm and dragged him bodily aside, even as the behemoth surged across at an inhuman pace, slamming into the wrecked car that Hancock had been standing next to, crumpling it like paper, then shoving it aside with a squeal of twisting metal. 

“Fuck fuck _fuck_ ,” Hancock yelped, as the behemoth swiped for them, the anchor chain hissing through the air, catching Danse heavily against the back a leg, slamming him off balance into the asphalt. There was a loud _crack_ from up above, far away, and the behemoth bellowed, staggering back a step as its head snapped back from a rifle shot, and then Hancock was beside Danse, jabbing a stimpack into his thigh, then hauling him up. The numbing effect took, and Danse followed Hancock on a hobbled run, as the behemoth snarled and shook itself, trying to weave as much as he could behind cover. 

Almost there. They were almost there. Danse could recognise the streets now, the turns, and there, the open manhole that Hancock had mentioned before, the sewer- 

“Danse!” he heard Piper scream from somewhere up top, and instinctively, Danse jumped aside. The behemoth powered past, charging, head down, anchor snaking wildly behind him, and Hancock put on an impressive burst of speed, diving into the manhole, just in time. The behemoth roared as it crashed into a wall, twisting as brick crumbled down over its shoulders, twisting around to glare at Danse with insane, animal hatred.

Ah hell. Now it was between him and the exit route. 

Fahrenheit and the others were firing, shots whistling past, trying to attract the behemoth’s attention, and distantly, Danse could even hear MacCready shouting insults. “You don’t scare me,” Danse grit out, “Abomination.” The behemoth growled, picking itself out of the wall, turning around. Danse feinted, pretending to run forward, then darted hastily to the side as the anchor chain slung out, crashing into the concrete, just inches away from his foot. He broke into a dead run, jinking around the behemoth and over a car, around a street corner, sprinting towards the neon Goodneighbor sign. Behind him, the creature screamed its frustration to the sky. 

His leg was starting to throb even with the stimpack - the anchor chain had probably cracked bone - but Danse ignored it, running as hard as he could, rifle cradled low. Behind him, he could hear the behemoth getting closer, its breath whistling as it started to charge- 

Hands grabbed at Danse’s ankles, and as he twisted against the grip instinctively, Hancock snarled something and _pulled_. Danse’s shoulder slammed painfully against the edge of the manhole as he was dragged off balance, then he was falling, flailing, landing in an ungainly heap on top of something soft that cursed at him and slapped him against the head. Above, the sky was briefly blotted out as the behemoth charged over the manhole, then there was a faint _crash_ as it slammed into a wall, slowing down. Danse waited, breathless, then he smiled to himself as he heard the dim sounds of laser fire. The synths beyond Goodneighbor’s fence had taken the bait. 

“Hey,” Hancock growled. “You are fucking _heavy_ , asshole.”

Danse got up gingerly, then pulled Hancock up as well. “Thanks for the save,” he conceded. The ghoul must have sprinted along the sewer tunnel under the streets to get in place in time to pull Danse out of the way.

“Don’t mention it.” Hancock smirked. “C’mon. Party’s getting started without us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In game I actually killed Swan very early on by exploiting its AI’s leashing… my go-to tactic for murdering higher level mobs in games… :/ if you run far up the slope it eventually stops following you, then you can just nudge back and forth sniping it until it dies while dodging rocks. Also yes, it’s possible to hide in the shack/APC and just snipe it until it dies. But presumably in reality Wastelanders would just leave it alone. 
> 
> On populations: I’m probably going to regret this by putting in numbers, but… details :/ Vaults are (technically) designed to hold about 1,000 people at a go. The Institute, although it kinda felt like a really big vault to me, was from the descendants of the CIT + whatever randoms they tended to hoover up from the surface sometimes (like Dr Li)… so I thought maybe a fixed population of approx 300 people with helper synths. The max number of people you can have in total in all your settlements is based on your charisma (default 10+ 1per point) = for my game at 6 charisma, max of 480 people. As to the number of Brotherhood soldiers, Reddit indicated maybe 500 left to Lyons + 300 Outcast… after civil war + leaving people behind to man the Citadel I’m thinking maybe they brought 100+ out on the Prydwen.
> 
> Reddit article on population: https://www.reddit.com/r/falloutlore/comments/398ovb/whats_the_estimated_population_for_various/
> 
> Added reading:  
> http://www.gamingenthusiast.net/news/fallout-4-and-humanitys-descent-into-madness/  
> http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/28/life-in-a-refugee-camp-the-cold-and-fear-get-in-your-bones


	8. Chapter 8

iii.

Arthur was in the middle of working through the morning’s messages when there was a respectful knock on his door. “Come in,” he said absently, scanning to the end of Quinlan’s summary of a recent find: almost complete specs for some kind of advanced turret.

Proctor Teagan poked his head cautiously through the door, and eased into the room clutching a clipboard to his chest like a shield. “Elder.”

“Teagan. What can I do for you?” 

Teagan let out a deep sigh. “Cutting all those Institute people loose and chasing them off our doorstep would be a nice start.”

“This again?”

“I think,” Teagan said, very patiently, “What with you only getting New Tesla reports out of Cade’s mouth, and all the security on site being Cade’s sympathiser friends, that you’re not seeing the whole problem. Sir.” 

“Which is?” Arthur raised his eyebrows. 

“Firstly, and pretty obviously, there’s ‘bout a hundred of us, give or take, and _three hundred_ of them. Sir.”

“Of which a quarter or so are either children or of an advanced age.“ 

“Still leaves us outnumbered.” 

Arthur shook his head slowly. “If we can’t handle three hundred civilians as we are, even discounting Liberty Prime and the vertibirds, I’ll be profoundly disappointed.” 

“Question’s not about ‘handling’ them, though I’ll get to that,” Teagan said dryly. “It’s back to my original problem. Food. We’ve been on rations aboard the Prydwen since leaving the Capital Wasteland. And we’re still on rations.” 

“Of that I’m aware.”

“Well sir,” Teagan sucked in a slow breath, “Some of us are thinking, maybe, just maybe, it’s a bit unfair how we’re still scraping by at min rations, when all this food is coming in to feed people who aren’t even Brotherhood in the first place. Look sir,” Teagan added hastily, as Arthur started to speak, “Sorry. I know. Greatest scientific minds, more people like Doctor Li and all that. Fact is, I don’t think _all three hundred_ of them are useful. Maybe we cut out the big time eggheads and their families, pack them up on vertibirds and send _those_ back to the Citadel, where they can start work in the labs.” 

“And that’ll enamour those to us, you think?”

“Citadel has more people who can keep an eye on them. And feed them. And more importantly, sir,” Teagan said evenly, “Give most people a choice between exile or doing what they do for some comfort? Most of them will pick the second option. I know you grew up under Elder Lyons, and you were pretty close to the second Elder Lyons, sir. But some of us, we joined back up because you were focused on the main mission, not people who’d either die or turn raider if kicked out to pasture. We’re here to find tech, not babysit people who made their own beds, yeah?”

“Finished?” Arthur asked quietly. Teagan flushed a little, but he nodded, his eyes narrowed. “Firstly. All of you who volunteered - and I repeat, _volunteered_ \- to come with me aboard the Prydwen to combat the new threat in the Commonwealth _knew_ that it wasn’t going to be a comfortable op. I eat min rations as well, same as everyone aboard this ship, and I’ve had worse, believe me. So have you, I think.”

Teagan set his jaw. “I’ve known what it’s like to be bone-hungry all the time. I don’t want that for my brothers.”

“And you think it might be right, do you think, to stand by and let three hundred people starve to death? Even bearing in mind,” Arthur added, “That the supplies coming in are courtesy of the Sentinel?”

“The Sentinel is Brotherhood, and using Brotherhood resources now for babysitting his little farms: he should keep _that_ in mind. Feeding civilians is not our primary concern, sir.” 

“Tell me, Proctor. What’s the difference between the Brotherhood of Steel and people like the Institute, the Enclave, or even that misguided little faction that called itself the Railroad?”

“We’re better armed?” Teagan asked dryly. “Well sir, I would say. We collect and preserve tech to keep it out of the hands of people who’d misuse it. We look to the long game - rebuilding civilisation.”

“And what do you see when you look at children, but the future?” Arthur inquired, curling his lip. “Have you read the Codex?”

“Uhh. Of course sir. Before, when I was an initiate. We all had to.”

“‘ _Shield yourself from those not bound to you by steel, for they are the blind. Aid them when you can, but lose not sight of yourself._ ’” Arthur quoted. “Those are the words of my bloodline, my direct ancestor Roger Maxson, the founder of our order. You mention Owyn Lyons. _He_ lost his sight, by abandoning his mission in full. But here - are the vertibirds silent, Proctor? Is Quinlan not kept busy by the documents that pour in every day, along with all his Scribes? Are Cade and the others neglecting their onboard duties? Is Ingram not even, right now, still working through all the data that we collected from the Institute, preparing the first datapack to be couriered back to the Citadel for further study? Have we not destroyed the Institute?”

“Sir-” 

“We are still executing our primary directive,” Arthur waved at his terminal. “But while doing so, while we have the capacity, why shouldn’t we aid the blind? Many of our own brothers came to us from the wastes, or were born from Wastelanders who joined the Brotherhood. Of everyone here, I am the only one whose bloodline has always been pure Brotherhood. But that does not make me better than you. Or Knight Jeanna, by the door to the command deck, whose mother is a Wastelander. Or Sergeant Kells’ wife, who was born in Rivet City.”

“The difference between us and the Enclaves and the Institutes out there,” Arthur continued, as Teagan was silent, “Is that we are not blind to the world. We know its past, see its present, and we have a vision of the future for humanity. A vision that allows people to starve to death when we have the capacity to aid them? To let people die just so that we can be more comfortable? That is not _my_ vision. There’s no future in that sort of humanity.”

“Yes sir,” Teagan said, subdued now. “Understood.” 

“Dismissed, Proctor.” 

Teagan ducked out, visibly relieved, and nearly walked right into the Sentinel, who grinned and dodged to the side, bringing up his hands in a playful gesture of surrender. “Whoah. I didn’t realize there was a queue.” Teagan didn’t bother to acknowledge him, hurrying past.

Arthur rubbed his temples briefly. “What do _you_ want?” 

“Just dropping by with an update. Seems the important bit of the G.E.C.K. is in the Glowing Sea.”

“Captain Banks will not be pleased.”

“You’ve heard that too, huh?”

“Sound carries from the mess hall,” Arthur said dryly. “Do you know where exactly in the Glowing Sea?”

“No sir,” Nate cleared his throat. “So uh. I might need a few more vertibird teams. Few days of aerial sweeps, mapping out all the points of interest in the Glowing Sea… maybe even surveys in hazmat suits, but I’ll settle for the map. And before you chew me out, might I remind you that the last Brotherhood of Steel op in the Glowing Sea unearthed a payload that’s still riding high in our giant robot.”

“It’s about time that we extended our aerial surveillance to the Glowing Sea, actually.” 

“Wow,” Nate grinned. “You’re full of surprises today, sir.” 

“Why,” Arthur frowned at him, “Did you expect me to authorise the effective murder of hundreds of people, as well as sabotage an actual Brotherhood op issued to you by a Proctor? All in one morning? I’m disappointed that you think so little of me.” 

“Now we just need to get you past your really _narrow_ idea of what constitutes ‘people’ and we’re set,” Nate grinned, though his eyes were perfectly serious. “Sir.”

Arthur exhaled irritably. “Your morality is two hundred years old, Sentinel. You’ve been in a super mutant den before, I presume?”

“Kinda hard to forget.”

“Seen those body bags? What do you think they’re made of, just brahmin? That’s rather a _lot_ of brahmin, wouldn’t you think? And as to ghouls? I presume you’re thinking of places like Goodneighbor. But you’ve also been all around the Commonwealth, haven’t you? Met a feral ghoul pack? Seen them tear people apart? That’s the inevitable fate of a ghoul. As to synths,” Arthur’s lip curled. “They weren’t even originally human at all.” 

“‘There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state.’ Book that I read once. Makes you think.”

Arthur shrugged. “Your dog understands what freedom is. Tie it up and see. Synths aren’t human, Sentinel. That’s all there is to it.” 

“So all you’re really looking at maybe helping out is someone who was born from a womb, but not then too irradiated or infected by a virus?” Nate asked dryly. “I’ve met a lot of ‘humans’ out there who turned out to be total murderous bastards. The Commonwealth seems to have a crazy number of raiders. More than settlers, even.”

“Far too many people behave like animals just because they can,” Arthur said flatly. “But whether someone is or is not human? That’s an inarguable state.” 

“Funny,” Nate said quietly, and all the humor had faded from his voice. “Through our history? That’s always just seemed to have been a matter of opinion and degree.”

VII.

Fahrenheit, MacCready, the assaultron and four ghoul bodyguards caught up with them when they were under a building that Hancock had called the Third Rail. “The others are in position,” Fahrenheit reported briskly, as Hancock went through a heavy ring of keys from his pocket and handed her a long copper one. “So far so good. The behemoth’s in the courtyard. Went through our perimeter wall like it was nothing. Last we saw, it was engaging all the robot-like synths in the courtyard, all at once.”

“What about the Courser and the other two?” Danse asked. 

“No confirmed visual.”

“Damn,” Hancock cursed. “I was hoping we could… Nevermind. Okay guys. Stick to the plan. Marge and Eddie, you guys stay here. Shoot anyone who sparkles funny. Fahrenheit, you take KL-E-0, Jack and Deena, check Third Rail, Daisy’s, and Hotel Rexford. Me, MacCready and Danse here, we’ll go Old State House and the Memory Den. Once we get out who we can, _that_ ’s when we go into the extermination business.”

“Copy that,” Danse nodded. 

“Ok boss,” Fahrenheit agreed. 

“Commencing Extensive Weapons Testing,” KL-E-0 announced in a husky purr. Like all Assaultrons, it was vaguely humanoid, more like a stick figure impression of a person, with gleaming red blips for eyes and a black chassis. She had a white star painted over the right side of her torso, as she turned her head, little whistling, clicking sounds could be heard from within her shell. “On Appropriate Targets, Naturally.” 

“Uh, you do that, KL-E-0. But before we evacuate people, do it only if you really have to, yeah? Once we _do_ get everyone out, feel free to get your test on.” Hancock corrected. “We all good? Righto. Go! Go! Forward March! That what you professionals say, right?” 

“Please don’t.” Danse said wearily.

Fahrenheit and the others immediately began to head briskly upwards, clanking up the ladder - KL-E-0 waiting at the base, presumably to be hauled up by the others afterwards. Hancock had already started to walk briskly through the tunnels, taking turns unerringly, until they were under another hatch. 

“Old State House,” Hancock said, unnecessarily. “Your leg holding up, Danse?”

“I’ll be fine.” 

“Lemme take a peek,” MacCready suggested. “Since I’m the only one here who probably understands subtlety.”

The Old Statehouse basement turned out to be empty - MacCready gave the all clear signal, and they swarmed out of the hidden hatch into a storage room, lit only by the hooded lantern at MacCready’s belt. Outside, the sounds of a furious battle could be heard, with the behemoth’s deafening roars punctuated by rounds upon rounds of laser fire. 

“Sounds like someone’s having more fun than we are,” Hancock whispered.

“What happens if that thing shits on all the synths but is still alive at the end?” MacCready inquired sweetly. “We uh, just ask it nicely to leave?” 

“We kill it, obviously,” Danse frowned at the mercenary.

“Oh, of _course_. Great. Why didn’t _I_ think of that?” MacCready said sardonically. 

“Rescue people first. Bitch out each other later.” Hancock told them, unlocking the storage room door with another key. On the first floor landing, a pair of Gen-1s stood by the windows, firing controlled bursts out at the behemoth beyond, and before Danse could say anything, MacCready shot the head off the furthest one, and Hancock had blown out the torso of the nearest with his shotgun. 

Danse sighed out aloud, his ears ringing from the roar of the shotgun in such an enclosed space. “I couldn’t help it,” Hancock protested, when they got some of their hearing back, even as MacCready shrugged and said, “Force of habit.” 

Thankfully, this didn’t seem to attract any synths - or worse, the behemoth - to their location. A check of the house found a few civilians cowering in a cellar, humans and ghouls both, whom Hancock quickly calmed down and hustled over to the hatch. Once the hostages were on their way through the tunnel, Hancock locked up and led them down another fork in the tunnels.

This time, when MacCready pushed the hatch up, there was a shriek, and MacCready let out a muffled yelp as something whacked him across the face, knocking him off balance and tumbling down to land heavily on his ass on the tunnel floor. It was a box of Sugar Bombs.

“Hold fire!” Danse said sharply, as Hancock raised his shotgun. “Whoever’s up there, identify yourself.”

“Oh thank God!” A blonde woman peered anxiously through the hatch. She looked bedraggled and somewhat the worse for wear, her face smudged with dirt and the feathers on her dress collar missing in chunks. “Hancock!”

“In the flesh, Irma. You okay?” Hancock asked. “C’mon down here quick. Where’s Amari?”

“They still got her,” Irma whispered back, as she clambered gratefully down. “They locked me in the basement. I never knew there was another door here!”

“Yeah, well,” Hancock coughed. “S’pose it was emergencies only. Can’t be too careful, see. Amari’s still up there?”

“Yes,” Irma wrung her hands. “Kent too. They’ve got both of them in the pod room. I… I think they’re still alive. I heard their voices before… there’s something going on outside! Some monster, a big one, and-“

“Irma, calm down,” Hancock said quickly. “How many is ‘they’? How many up there?”

“I don’t know, I was dragged past on the way to the basement days ago. I saw three who were more human-like.” Irma shuddered. “What’s happening? Why did they attack like this? We’ve always been happy to help anyone!” 

“That’s robots for you,” MacCready said cheerfully. “It’s all sunshine and rainbows one day, death and destruction the next.” 

“Thanks, MacCready,” Danse muttered. 

“Aww no, you? You’re death and destruction _all_ the time.” 

“All right, Irma, you’re safe now,” Hancock said soothingly. “Just head down the tunnel that way, keep left, and you’ll reach the others. We’re going to go up and get Amari and Kent.”

“Okay. Okay.” Irma took a deep breath. Then she abruptly hugged Hancock and kissed him on the cheek, before stepping away, patting herself down, as though embarrassed. “Good luck,” she said, to a clearly surprised Hancock. “Don’t get yourselves killed.”

“Never knew you were such a lady killer,” MacCready drawled, when Irma was gone. 

“You don’t know me very well, squirt. Now c’mon. Time to be big damn heroes.”

From the smell of the room, Irma had definitely been locked in there for days. Hancock unlocked the door and eased it quietly open, MacCready sighting over his shoulder as he did so. Empty. They edged quietly out of the room, creeping past heavy red velvet drapes and narrow corridors, until eventually Hancock held up a hand to stop. Beyond a narrow door was a large room, probably the lobby, with an upraised dais to Danse’s right and a couch, overturned on its front. Something was firing out of a window at the behemoth beyond, and Danse raised a finger, about to signal that they shoot and sweep as one, but MacCready raised his rifle from his angle and fired. 

Whoever was shooting stopped, and a body could be heard hitting the ground. Danse let out a deeper sigh. “What?” MacCready hissed. “I thought you said ‘on one second’!” 

At least MacCready's rifle had its muzzle suppressed, even if the sound was going to be just as damning if there was anyone else in the building. Hancock poked his head briefly out of the doorway. “Looks like… hm, what do the pros say? ‘All clear’, right? Or uh, ‘Weapons Cold’? Never understood that one.”

“Stop it,” Danse told him, though he cautiously stepped out, sweeping the room quickly. It did look clear. A very brief fight had taken place, by the looks of it - a dresser was overturned, as were some chairs along with that couch, But other than that, there was no blood, which was promising-

“Uh guys,” MacCready said. “Check this out.”

Danse looked. Outside the window, lurching around the courtyard outside, the behemoth looked very much the worse for wear, skin blackened, boat shield missing, some of its fingers on its left hand melted away. It had done its work though - the bodies of Gen 1s littered the ground, with only two that Danse could see still firing on the lurching, howling monster. 

Something else was flickering just out of the behemoth’s reach, firing at it, only bright blue beams marking its presence. The Stealth Boy integration made the Courser’s form flicker and waver only around the edges, eye-wateringly uneven. What little intelligence remained in the behemoth’s brain had correctly identified the Courser as its worst threat - it ignored the Gen 1s’ erratic fire, concentrating on trying to find the Courser, wildly swinging its anchor around, turning its head this way and that, bellowing its frustration. It was slowing down.

“Well shit,” MacCready muttered. “I think the huge-ass guy is actually _losing_.” 

“About that,” Hancock said thoughtfully. “Wait and see.” 

“Wait and see what?” MacCready demanded, but Hancock shook his head. The Courser did seem to be winning. The behemoth was staggering now, drunkenly, whimpering in pain. There were fewer and fewer wild swings, and it had lost an eye, the socket a smoking crater. 

Then a bright green splash bloomed on the courtyard, and another, on the anchor. Splashes of watery paint blotted all over the floor, launched from up high, shimmering and disappearing on the uneven air as the Stealth Boy did its work, but on the ground, footprints could now be seen, padding about, giving away the Courser’s position. The behemoth roared, swinging, and the anchor chain slapped a patch of uneven air, and the Courser was bowled across the courtyard, integrated stealth flickering and failing. The behemoth charged after it, huge fists upraised, and the Courser simply kept firing, charge after charge until the behemoth collapsed, right on top of it. Across the courtyard, the remaining two Gen 1s were getting picked off, one from a rifle shot somewhere up top, the other from a red laser blast.

Danse headed out of the Memory Den, safety off, jogging briskly towards the behemoth, ready to duck for cover. Nothing fired back, though, and as he got close, he saw that the Courser was pinned under the monster’s shoulder. It was in the shape of a man with dark skin and black hair, a pair of full visor sunglasses across the eyes, dressed in the leather armoured coat of the Coursers. The Courser glanced at Danse, expressionless, then further beyond, as MacCready and Hancock hurried up. 

“Any last words, asshole?” Hancock drawled, but before the Courser could say anything, Hancock emptied his barrel in its face. 

“I think you’re meant to give it a couple of seconds to actually say something,” MacCready said, staring at the smoking wreck of synth fluids and parts. 

“I got bored,” Hancock admitted. 

Danse shook his head wearily in disgust, and headed back towards the Memory Den. Hancock overtook him past the overturned sofa, sidling up to the other exit, peering through, then heading cautiously down the stairs, Danse at his back and MacCready at the rear. He was expecting the worst, but when they burst out into the room at the end, a dark haired woman in a white coat and a ghoul in a tweed suit jerked up from their seats in surprise. The chamber was lined with workbenches and shelving, and dominated by two large pods, both occupied. One held a brown-haired woman in a white uniform of a long-sleeved jacket and trousers; the other, a bald man, in the same uniform.

“Okay,” Hancock blinked. “I wasn’t sure what I was expecting actually.”

“Irma?” Amari asked anxiously. “How’s Irma?” 

“She’s fine,” Hancock said dismissively. “Who are these two jokers?” 

“Institute synths. Think they escaped from the Institute or something,” Kent explained nervously. “There’s a third one like them but he went up top when the gunfire started. They wanted Amari to graft in new memories. This guy here knew some things about the Railroad.”

“Hold on,” MacCready said, confused. “That Courser, he was definitely the one with the boss, unless they got copies of them sitting around. Why the hell would he help two synths get a write-over? He was in the business of bringing back synths that did it.”

“When a human was in charge of his jobs, maybe.” Hancock leveled a shotgun at the nearest pod.

“Stop!” Amari cried. 

“Hm true. Nearly broke something there. Get the glass up and I’ll knife them instead,” Hancock suggested. “Can’t do better than a good knifing.”

“You’ll kill them like this? They’re unarmed. Helpless. When they wake up, they’ll just be like any other Wastelander.” Amari pleaded. “You’ve always turned a blind eye before!” 

“Huh.” MacCready blinked. “This is why you guys give me a fucking headache. Deacon was kind of OK, but the Railroad as a whole? Buncha nutsos. These people kinda… took over the town and murdered some of your friends. Y’know. The actual livin’, breathin’ sort?”

“And violence is always the answer?” Amari demanded. “What’s the point? They’ll be harmless when they wake up.” 

“This is my town,” Hancock growled, “And assholes who bumrush the gates and kill _my_ people answer to _me_. Getting a brain wipe over doesn’t absolve the shit you did before.”

“They’re not just robots-“

“Doesn’t that make it worse then?” Danse cut in coldly. “If they’re ‘not just robots’, then they should know right from wrong. And they chose to kill to get in here, when they could’ve negotiated. They’ve made their choice.” 

“And killing them in return is the only option, is there?” Amari shook her head angrily. “This world… fine. Do what you must.” 

She turned away, hunching her shoulders. Hancock stared pointedly at Kent, who slunk awkwardly over to the terminal, inputing a code. The glass slipped up, and Hancock briskly knifed the two synths, angling his dagger up through their jaws to get to their brains, then tugging the lifeless bodies off the pods to double check them. Danse flicked the safety on his rifle back off, relaxing. 

“Righto then,” Hancock told them. “Pretty sure since there’s no more gunfire outside that Fahrenheit’s done a good look around. I’m off to get everyone back in here. Thanks for the assist, guys. Oh, and Amari, these two folks here still need a favour.” He gave them a quick, sardonic wave, and began to head back up the steps.

“What do you two still want?” Amari asked listlessly. 

“Not me,” MacCready jerked a thumb at Danse. “Him. Hey. You sure you wanna do this?” he asked cautiously. “‘Cos, uh. If something breaks up there, the boss is really gonna be pissed.” 

“I’m sure.” Danse glanced over at Amari. “Doctor, is it possible to find out… which memories are real in my head, and which are grafted?” 

Amari blinked at him, then she studied him more closely, narrowing her eyes as scientific curiosity pushed aside despair. “You’re a… Gen-3? A new model? I couldn’t even tell. Theoretically, it’s possible to tell which memories are grafted. ‘Real’ memories, as you say, should be more stable inside the pod, but I’ve never had an occasion to try and test this. But why would you want to know?”

Danse ignored the question. “And the memories that the graft overwrote - is it possible to access those?”

“I’ve never tried it before either,” Amari admitted. “We’ll have to take a look at exactly what was done to erase them. Why?”

“The person I replaced,” Danse began, then corrected himself. “The _human_ whose life I stole. If there is one... _someone_. If he’s still alive, I want to find him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nate’s quote: Bicentennial Man, by Asimov (The book, not the film!)
> 
> Shooting suppressed handguns in a house: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2GchQ3orB0  
> One of the Lee Child books, forgot which, that I read for gun research/lawless pleasures aha, mentioned once that shooting a shotgun inside a house pretty much has the same sound effect to your hearing as a grenade going off.


	9. Chapter 9

7.0.

Nate was in a bad mood after leaving the Prydwen, and after after an hour spent flying desultorily over the Glowing Sea, when Captain Banks yet again pointed out that flying survey was best left to the specialists, he very nearly made her ground the vertibird right there and then.

“She’s… actually right,” Nick said, very mildly, as Nate took in a deep breath through gritted teeth. “We’re not doing much out here. I mean, I don’t even know what we’re looking for. Till I met you, I’ve never been this high up above the Commonwealth before, let alone gone anywhere _near_ the Glowing Sea.” 

Nate forced himself to count to ten in his head, rubbing the heels of his palms against his eyes. Then he let out a strangled, hoarse snarl. “Fuck! All right. All right. Sorry. I’ve spent all morning having to wrangle assholes today and it’s given me a bad turn. Sorry, Banks.”

“S’all right,” Banks said generously. “I’ve seen people leave a briefing with the Elder in tears. So you’ve been doing OK, sir.”

“Every time I talk to him I get the feeling that I’m being screwed over,” Nate muttered, “And not even in a fun way.” 

“All part of interacting with a CO, sir.”

“Right. Well. I guess there’s nothing to do but wait for the survey teams to do their job. But I don’t feel like going back to the Prydwen yet.” Nate glanced at Nick hopefully. “Any other ideas? Leads?”

“Sorry, I got nothing,” Nick shrugged. “I kinda appreciate your trust in me and everything, but looking for a magic device that will solve a reactor meltdown…?” Nick actually managed a jerky shrug. “ _Kinda_ more of a doozy than what I’m used to. I mean. What I’m _used_ to is like, helping wives find their missing dirtbag husbands.”

“Well sir,” Banks observed, “If I may make a suggestion, we’ve still got three quarters a tank of fuel and we’re full up on gunner ammo.”

“… I think I really do like you after all, Captain.” 

“So we’re just going to fly around and look for trouble?” Nick asked, resigned. 

“In a vertibird. With a minigun,” Nate pointed out. “That’s having fun in _style_ , while making the world a safer place. Fully sanctioned, too. I mean, there’s no telling what kinda tech we might find out there, right?”

“That’s right, sir.” 

“Suddenly I see what Doctor Li meant about you being naturally suited for the Brotherhood,” Nick said dryly. 

“Man, you should’ve seen what we used to get up to back when,” Nate said wistfully. “All right, Captain. I’ve got an idea. Some time ago, before I met Nick here for the first time, I had to sneak past this huge-ass monster in a pond. Seems like maybe, now that we’ve got a bit of time, we should do some pest control.”

“We’re going to take pot shots at _Swan_?” Nick asked, his eyes glowing brighter. “This is going to end in tears.” 

“How good are you at dodging ack-ack, Captain? Behemoths tend to throw rocks when they get frustrated, and the last time I was fought one on a vertibird at Fort Strong, the bird got a little dinged up.” 

“Nothing like a bit of morning manoeuvres to wake up the spirit, sir.” 

“That’s what I like to hear. All right. Let’s turn around. Bearing of ten o’ clock. It’s between Diamond City and Goodneighbor. Weird little pond in a small lake, white boat, funny shack, toxic waste barrels. Can’t miss it.” 

“You are _all_ crazy,” Nick decided mournfully. 

Nate had known soldiers who had hated flying. Not that they were scared of it - that’d disqualify someone from the field, stat - but some people just plain disliked it. Didn’t feel safe hurtling through the air in a tin can, didn’t like dropping out with nothing but a prayer and a ‘chute, didn’t like long-haul, didn’t like the food. Nate hadn’t really been in one camp or the other before, but now, at the end of the world, there was something awe-inspiring being aboard something in flight, the last such technology in the world, or so it felt. 

He felt like king of the air, nosing the clouds themselves, striding over the world. As the smear of blasted fields and urban sprawl started to pull by beneath them, even Nick peered out again, fascinated. Settlers paused in their fields to watch them go by, raiders scattered away, some enterprising wackos even firing up at them. Nate didn’t bother to return fire: the raiders were going to eat their dust in a second. 

When they were deeper into Boston proper, though, some of the fun went out of it. Nate had never really had the chance to just sit still and enjoy a flight before. With nothing else on his mind but the chance to sightsee, it was incredible how devastated the city of his birth was, now that he was looking at it in the hard light of day, every fracture, every bit of twisted rubble bright and stark as far as the eye could see. 

How _changed_ it was. 

Fenway Park, its oval built over, its flanks crusted over with shabby housing. _Fenway Park_. Nate’s dad had taken him there when he was three years old to watch his first baseball game. Nate had hoped someday to take Shaun there to watch a game. God. It felt like such a long, long time and an age ago. There were avenues where he had walked with Nora on dates, when they were younger, sillier, in love, when nothing in the world had mattered but each other. Bars where he’d gone for drinks with the boys. Playgrounds where he’d chased friends, years and years before, playing at cops and robbers. Everything was broken now, it felt, or vandalised, and all the survivors seemed to do was wrangle over the carcass. Humanity had collectively descended into insanity when Nate had been frozen away, and when he woke up again, it seemed like nothing had changed - only that the world itself had died. 

Nick’s startled tone broke Nate out of his funk. “Hey. Wouldya look at that. Swan’s gone for a walk.” 

Nate glanced over the side of the vertibird as Banks swung in a slow arc. The pond that Nate remembered was flat now, its surface peaceful. Gouges in the soil and grooves in the concrete showed that something very big had hauled itself out, very recently, and had headed out, away from the pond.

“Ahh,” Banks coughed. “So we’re hunting a very _big_ behemoth, are we?”

“Second thoughts?” Nate asked.

“Nah. This is going to be _great_.”

“For someone who complained so much about flying in the Glowing Sea, you’re surprisingly upbeat about facing huge monsters, Captain.”

“Huge monsters can’t corrode my baby with rad storms. I shit on huge monsters.” Banks paused. “When I’m high enough up, that is.”

“Seems like it went towards Goodneighbor,” Nick said, sounding worried now. “Wonder why? Usually it stays in the pond.” 

“Better pick up the pace, Captain.” 

The vertibird’s engines obligingly roared, the aircraft surging forward, nose tipping as it darted forward, following the trail of devastation: a wrecked car, more gouges in ground, another wrecked car, a freshly crumbled wall. They didn’t have far to go. Goodneighbor’s wall had been caved in, and- 

“Good lord. They killed it.” The carcass of the giant behemoth was lying still near the Memory Den, a miniature hill of dense flesh, amongst a swathe of shattered Gen-1 synth wrecks. Nearer the fence was a small pile of bodies, mostly Neighborhood Watch.

“I don’t think that’s all there is,” Nick suggested. “Synths and dead bodies and… is that _paint_ on the floor? What’s going on?”

“That’s Hancock - Hey Mayor!” Nate yelled down, projecting his voice over the roar of the vertibird engines. “Permission to land!” 

“Just don’t break my roof!” Hancock waved up from the ground. 

“Land us somewhere and hold position, Captain. Dogmeat will stay aboard,” Nate told Banks, who nodded, deftly coming down on the nearest flat roof. Nate ducked out before the propellers had even stopped, darting down the fire escape, Nick on his heels.

Hancock met him on the ground, and they clasped hands briefly in greeting, the ghoul mayor grinning, openly pleased. “Hey boss. You were totally late to the party. Got my message, did you?”

“Nope,” Nate admitted. “Passing by, wanted to check on things.”

“Well, you’re late, like I said.” Hancock waved absently back behind him. “Everything’s under control. Thanks in part to our friends the newsgirl, the squirt and the ex-tinhead.”

“Danse’s here?” Nate brightened up. He’d been so busy the past few days that he hadn’t even had time to miss Danse - or worry about him very much. To his surprise, Hancock didn’t tease him or even make a flippant remark: instead, Hancock stared at him assessingly, as though trying to judge his mood. Fear pricked cold sweat up Nate’s spine. “What’s wrong? Is he hurt?”

“Not really. Got dinged in a couple of places, nothing serious… er…” Hancock coughed. “He’s uh, in the Memory Den. Maybe you should see the rest for yourself.” 

Nate had never sprinted a short distance so quickly in his life. Inside the Memory Den, Irma shot him a startled look from where she was tugging the couch back upright with Kent’s help, but as he skidded to a stop, she said, “Your friends are with Amari.” 

“Thanks, Irma.” Nate darted down the stairs, nearly ran headlong into MacCready, who let out a yelp of shock, backpedaling, and Nate had to grab his shoulder to steady him as they almost tumbled out into Amari’s lab. Within it, Amari, Piper and Danse stared at Nate with open surprise: Amari by her terminal, Piper perched on a table, Danse rising up from a bench by the wall. 

“Well fuck,” Nate said, into the shocked silence. He looked Danse over carefully, anxiously, then started to relax. “You look OK to me. I’m going to go back up and kick Hancock’s bony ass.”

“I’m… fine.” Danse smiled awkwardly at him, and _now_ Nate’s instincts ramped to high alert. 

“Danse-“ Piper began. 

“Not now, Piper,” Danse said quietly. 

“Hey, uh,” MacCready called from the door, “Remember, only the After-The-Boss time really matters, right? Right?” 

Nate shut his eyes, and counted to five. “Piper, could you take everyone else upstairs for a bit? Please.” He waited until there was silence, then he opened his eyes again. Danse was sitting back down at the bench, back against the wall. He looked tired. Worse, he looked _defeated_. 

A little frightened now, Nate sat down beside him, clasping his hands over his knees, waiting. Eventually, Danse said quietly, “You have unnaturally good timing.”

“Or bad timing,” Nate kept his tone light. “Seeing as I missed the throw down with the giant behemoth.”

“I…” Danse trailed off, then he sighed. “This wasn’t a good idea after all.”

“What?” 

“This. The two of us… I’m not human, Nate. And I never will be. Synths are something _other_. Maybe some of us can think for ourselves, like Nick, and do some good. But that doesn’t make us human. And we shouldn’t _try_ to be human. That’s why so many of all these problems started in the first place.” 

“… Okay,” Nate said slowly, “You’re starting to freak me out here.”

“Doesn’t mean that we should stop trying to do what’s right by others, or have some compassion, or…” Danse exhaled. “Human traits. The better ones. Having a little _humanity_ isn’t the same as having to be human.”

“Did Amari break something up there?” 

“She just helped me to finally come to terms with some things,” Danse said quietly. “I’m not human, Nate. I never was.”

“You sure seem real ‘human’ to me,” Nate forced a smile, wondering what the hell Danse was driving at. 

“I know. That’s the problem. You wanted me to _be_ human, so much - you wanted me to keep going on as I was before. You wanted it so much that I _tried_. For you, I tried. I really did. I tried to ignore what I really was, compartmentalise it. Tried to keep being the… the person you wanted me to be. The human you thought you saw when you looked at me.” 

“Danse, this might come as a shock to you,” Nate said quietly, evenly, “But I didn’t start loving you because you seem to bleed the right colour when you get scraped up. Same way I value Nick as a friend regardless of how he’s pretty damned obviously a synth. I _know_ you’re not human, all right? It doesn’t matter to me whether you are or you aren’t. What mattered to me was that you had some _humanity_. You still do, and that’s what I fell in love with. You’re not perfect - hell, I know that and some. But the rest, where you came from, how you were made? It doesn’t matter.”

Danse seemed to think that over, tilting his head back to stare up at the ceiling. “You’ve got a heart that’s too big for the world,” he said finally. “You’ll go far in the Brotherhood. I hope you will. It needs someone like you.” 

“Let’s not bring up the Brotherhood right now. Danse. What did you see? Did you use one of the pods?”

“I did. I had some hopes… a very faint hope…” Danse shook his head. “That doesn’t matter now. I need to take a break from my primary objective. There’s somewhere I need to go.”

“All right, sure. Where?” 

Danse stared at him, his expression unsettlingly inscrutable. “I don’t know if you should come with me.”

“You could tell me everything,” Nate said carefully, “Or I could go upstairs and squeeze Piper for it. She owes me a few big favours.”

“I’ve asked her not to. Nate. The time we’ve had together, I’ll treasure it for as long as I live. There’s… no one in this world more important to me than you. But I think it’s better if we had some time apart while I sort things out-“

“ _Danse_ ,” Nate growled, exasperated. “What the hell just went wrong? Where do you need to go?”

“I said-“

“You’ve successfully managed to freak me out, all right? Until you tell me everything, I’m not going to let you out of my sight. Look,” Nate said desperately. “Don’t do this. Can’t we talk about it? The number of people I’ve lost to get here… I don’t want to lose you too. Over something that I don’t even _understand_. I need you.”

Danse shook his head. “You don’t need me,” he said quietly. “And I don’t want to talk about it. But I understand that you’re probably going to be stubborn about it.” Here he offered Nate a wry, tired smile. “It turns out that there are offshoot labs. Institute labs, out in the Glowing Sea. There’s one in what I think is probably an old Vault. I need to go there.”

Nate let out a strangled, mirthless laugh. “You’re not going to believe me then. But coincidentally, I’m looking for a Vault like that. Doctor Li told me that there’s a G.E.C.K. in there. Part of one, anyway. She uh, said she was in Advanced Systems, they were testing the replicator by proxy out there, though she never said how, maybe encrypted radio, or whatever they were testing or…” he took in a deep breath, forcing himself to stop babbling. “So. You know where this vault is?”

“I think so.” 

“Then let’s go,” Nate said evenly. “I’ve got a vertibird up top and I’m good friends with the Captain. If you don’t make any fast moves she’ll fly us both there.” 

“I’ll mark it on your map and meet you there. Drop me off at the Co Op. I need to get my power armour.”

“Nice try. You could get into the power armour and get back on board the vertibird. Hell, _I_ probably need to pick up my set as well, where we’re going.”

“I give you my word that I’ll wait for you outside,” Danse said quietly, “Besides. If you insist on coming with me, I’d like you to bring the Elder with you.”

“Maxson? Why?” Nate blinked. “He’s uh, not exactly gonna be happy to see you, by the way. Not to mention I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to drag him along without either kidnapping him or bringing along the rest of the Prydwen. That last time where he showed up to bitch us out at the bunker alone? I think that was a once-off.”

“Not Elder Maxson then, if it’s too difficult or if he won’t come. One of the Proctors. Or at least a Paladin.”

“Okay,” Nate said uneasily. “I could bring it up with Maxson, but I’m pretty sure he’s going to overreact in some way. I don’t think I can dig Quinlan out of his room or Teagan out of his cage, and Ingram yelled at me only this morning for disturbing her when all I wanted was a simple answer to a G.E.C.K. question. You all right with Brandis?” 

“Brandis? I… yes. I suppose so. Paladin Brandis will be fine.” 

“Danse,” Nate tried again. “Seriously. What’s this all about? You’re scaring me.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Danse said, after a long pause. “That’s why I want to meet you there. I need to think about things. Clear my head. And when you’re around… it’s hard to think about anything else but you.”

“There’s vertibird patrols swarming the Glowing Sea, by the way. Since I was still looking for said Vault as of this morning.”

“Knowing vertibirds, they won’t venture down into firing range if they can afford it. The radioactive smog’s not good for the engines.” Danse managed a wan smile. “I’ll be fine. Especially if the patrols have pulled back towards the Glowing Sea. And they don’t fly at night anyway. I’ll head down when it gets dark, cross the Sea. ETA probably tomorrow at eleven hundred hours, at the latest.”

Nate gave up. Danse was going to be immovable on this, he could sense it. And as much as Nate wanted to push, he knew the warning signs. If he pushed, he was going to break something. “All right. I’ll… drop you off at the Co Op. But do I get some sort of explanation, at the least? Something I could give Brandis? Or even Maxson?” 

“Tell them,” Danse said, after a moment’s thought, “That the Brotherhood leaves no one behind.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be a two chapter update. :o I'm usually about 1-2 chapters ahead of the posting schedule, because I like to go through a few rounds of edits before posting. However I guess since I do want to wrap up this fic soon, and this next chapter is pretty much extended exposition/philosophising I thought I might as well move you guys into the: Next Stage Of The Quest: Meet Danse At The Vault. ^^;; Will try to comb out the bugs in the story as I go.

VIII.

Danse shaded his eyes, waiting until the vertibird had lifted off from beyond the Co Op and had flown off before he turned to head towards the Co Op’s communal kitchen. The quick breakfast he’d had in the morning back in Diamond City was a distant memory, and although he had no appetite he knew that he probably should eat something.

Nate had left Piper and MacCready behind at Goodneighbor, in case any other synths decided to show up, but Nick and the dog had also been dropped off back at the Co Op. Danse could sense Nick watching him thoughtfully, from the corn field, but he ignored it as he took a piece of cornbread for himself. A slab of slate with chalk markings had been hung up, helpfully noting that rationing measures were in place. New crops had been planted in neat furrows in the ground. Production was being scaled up to help provide for the Institute refugees, and Danse had seen the same upscaling in the few settlements they had flown over to get here.

That was one of the first things that Danse had admired about Nate. For all his strange, perhaps outdated convictions, Nate was a remarkably simple person, deep down, with a ruthlessly simple approach to life and its problems. Whether a solution was easy or difficult didn’t seem to matter: Nate would just put one foot ahead of the other until something gave way, like how the world had just done so, spectacularly. As to the future… Solve the additional rads from the reactor meltdown? Somehow, Danse was sure that Nate would find a way, eventually. Feed all the hundreds of refugees? There would be a way to do that too. Nate’s will seemed to force the world into shape around it, sometimes gently, sometimes with violence. And that was what Danse was concerned about. _Afraid_ of. He had no doubt that Nate was more than capable of talking him into doing whatever _Nate_ wanted. 

Danse was opening the door to his shack when Nick said, behind him, “Danse.”

His hand eased briefly on the handle. “Valentine.”

“Wanna talk?”

“No.” 

“Think we should,” Nick said, to Danse’s surprise. The… the _other synth_ had always carefully kept out of his way before. “Shared perspective and all that.”

“No.”

“We can talk,” Nick said reasonably, “Or I can shout at you through the window. And then Cait will probably join in. Maybe Strong, too.” 

Danse glared at Nick, but it was hard to glare down something so… grotesquely damaged. Not for the first time, Danse wondered how in the Creator’s name did Diamond City civilians get used to Nick Valentine. His synthetic skin was missing in large swathes, revealing an uncomfortable, absolutely alien tangle of little gears, pumps and cabling beneath. His eyes were an unnatural, unblinking feral yellow.

“All right,” Danse said coldly, leaning against the doorway, folding his arms, shifting his shoulders so that his rifle didn’t press between his spine and the frame. “Go ahead. Waste my time.”

To his annoyance, Nick stepped up onto the uneven deck and settled down on a rusty chair, stretching his ragged legs out comfortably in the late afternoon sun. “I’ve been kicking around for a bit, you know. Sometimes I still got to pop by the Memory Den for maintenance. Doctor Amari thinks I was probably one of the first ever synths that they ever tried to get self-awareness to work on. So if you think that whatever was done to your brain was a hatchet job, hoo-boy. You should see what’s in _my_ head.”

“What sort of maintenance?”

“Memories getting out of whack. That kinda thing. Y’see. From what the Doctor and I can make out from the soup inside my head… a long time back, in the Institute, they tried to push new frontiers all the time. Including cracking the problem of artificial intelligence. Making stuff like Mr Handys - all hardcoded parameters… they done that. Getting a robot to weed plants, wipe the floor, do advanced math, that’s the easy part. The hard part, apparently, was getting robots to do what people an’ animals do when they _ain’t_ thinking. The messy, sticky stuff. Like fear, affection, curiosity.” 

“Is there a point to this?”

“So what they did,” Nick ignored him, “Was make a choice. They could try and try to crack the tech horizon, make a humongous computer, find a way to make it self-aware. Or they could do a damned good job of copying the hell out of a human brain. I still have no fuckin’ idea what my head is made out of. I know yours is mostly bio matter. Same as the rest of you. Gen-3s, eh? But me? I think they were shocked that it even _worked_. Their big jump forward. Nothing more like making a copy of a person and sticking that copy into a mechanical brain. I’m kinda like the world’s most complex holotape player.”

Despite himself, Danse felt a faint twitch pulling up the corners of his mouth. “I’ve… never heard it put that way before.”

“Me, I think they overreacted by freaking out, trying to switch me off and throwing me out in the rubbish heap. But I guess I should be grateful they didn’t just disassemble me on the spot for parts. You asked me if there was a point to this. Yeah. We’re not human, sure. It’s god-damned obvious in my case. But we’re _copies_ of humans. I got everything that made the real Nick Valentine who he was, from who he’d known, who he’d loved and hated, his obsession with baseball trivia, his crazy dislike of chocolate Sugar Bombs… hell, I’ve even still got his mad love of sticking his nose into other people’s business.”

“But you’re not him.”

“Yeah. I know that. Fucking obvious. That’s not my point. The only way they could kickstart artificial intelligence in me, at a so-called human level, was by copying a human brain. The only thing that actually makes me autonomous is all the little tics and traits that made the real Nick Valentine a person. I see something new, I automatically cross reference it with his memories, the same way humans do. Like the Brotherhood of Steel, for example. The real Nick Valentine, he never did trust the military. Or organised religion. Brotherhood of Steel’s both.” 

“So we’re copies of people,” Danse said impatiently. “I knew that already. As you said. It’s fucking obvious.”

“Not all of us. The ones they kept around in the Institute to do grunt work, the new Gen-3s? Don’t know what they grafted in there. I reckon they finally found out how to get artificial brains to tick without having to install everything that made humans so _messy_. Big mistake, obviously. They just made _human level AI with no sorta safeguards_. Think they knew it was a problem too. S’why they freak the hell out whenever synths got loose.” 

“Yes. They made something evil.”

“Not evil,” Nick disagreed. “Sure. Evil’s a matter of opinion. But you can’t be evil if you don’t know what’s right from wrong. The new Gen-3s, they don’t get that coded inside. The guy who made me, I remember he said, what people got to fear from AI ain’t malice. It’s _competence_. He liked to tell his colleagues, think of a scenario, where you tell an AI, hey, give me peace on Earth. The AI makes some sleeping gas, puts everyone in the world to sleep, forever and ever. Mission accomplished, right? Maximum competence. That’s the problem with unfettered AI. S’why they tried to get around it by copying people. First with volunteers, like the sad sack who tried to make some extra bucks by volunteering to load up the memories that I got. Then I guess they decided to experiment further afield. Started kidnapping people.”

“Making synths like me,” Danse said grimly. 

“Yeah. Anyway. I’ve had far longer to think about this than you. And I promise I’m getting to the point. By loading up pretty much everything that made ‘Nick Valentine’ a person into my head, I figure they gave me a pretty solid starting point to work out everything else. The real Nick Valentine was kind of a stand up guy. Wasn’t perfect. But he tried to do good. Helped people out. I got that bedrock to work with, and I’m glad of that. But just as I know I ain’t human, I also know that I’m no longer something that’s just an advanced holotape player. I _know_ right from wrong - based on the real Nick’s values, anyway. I can make friends… hell, I even understand the _concept_ of ‘friends’, instinctively. They made me a real boy.”

“… No they didn’t.”

“Sorry. Very old joke there. Real Nick’s memories again.” Nick’s yellow eyes dimmed briefly. “So the point is. You’re probably at least ten years old, right? Probably one of the very first set of Gen-3s then, back when they still had to load in human memories to get us to tick. And I’m guessing, the guy you got copied from… seems like it worked out. In many ways, you’re an asshole-”

“… Thanks?”

“ _But_ ,” Nick continued, if with a faint grin, “Anger, compassion, you got that. Knowing right from wrong - damn but sometimes the rest of us _wish_ you’d stop going on about _that_. All the sticky, messy bits that make people _people_ , like it or not, we both got it. And you got one up on me. You’re mostly bio-engineered. Me, you know how much of a mind fuck it is sometimes to walk past Power Noodles and crave a bowl ‘cos the real Nick loved noodles? But I don’t got taste buds. And hell knows how much of my machinery it’ll mess up if I poured soup down my throat.” 

“The noodles are rather good,” Danse conceded, if wanly. 

“I figure none of us can help how we started out in life. Not even the humans. But what we do with the _rest_ of our lives with what we got? That’s how we should be judged. Not with where we came from. But by what we’ve done since. And where we wanna go next. That’s my two caps,” Nick said, eyeing Danse carefully. 

“I see,” Danse said quietly, thoughtfully. “I suppose… thank you. For saying it.”

“At least think about it, all right?” Nick pushed himself to his feet. “And uh. If you want company, heading out to wherever-“

“That won’t be necessary.” Danse opened the door. “… Take care of yourself, Valentine.”

Yellow eyes flared briefly with an unsettling glow, then Nick looked away. “Practice what you preach, Paladin.”

8.0.

Nate found Brandis in the mess hall, drowning his sorrows in a corner. The Paladin offered him a wry smile as Nate sat down opposite him, and nudged over the bottle. “That bad, huh?” Nate sniffed at the bottle. Alcohol. Pretty strong, too. Homemade moonshine? “This from the bar? Lemme buy you a round.”

“Spoils of war, actually,” Brandis admitted. “But yes. It’s an… interesting… job that you’ve pushed on me, sir.”

“Firstly, you ‘volunteered’, remember? Secondly, shit rolls downhill from high command all the time, Brandis. We just handball it left and right as it goes.”

“I know,” Brandis said gloomily. “I think I should have stayed in that bunker.”

Nate took a swig of the bottle and nudged it back over, enjoying the way the liquid seemed to warm his throat on the way down to his gut. “C’mon. It can’t be that bad.”

“Remember what I said before about so many people on the Prydwen being so green?”

“How could I have missed it?” Nate asked dryly. “You only said it about a _hundred_ times.”

“It’s not good to exaggerate,” Brandis said reproachfully. “Also, I was just trying to get myself reinstated more quickly before. Sound carries from here to certain places.”

“Oh yeah. I’ve been told.” Thankfully the Elder, last that Nate had seen, was busy having some sort of argument with Ingram in the main command deck, something about the vertibirds. Or at least, it was Ingram’s idea of an argument, which was to talk patiently and inexorably and at length until the other person caved. God knew if it worked on Maxson, but it sure as hell worked on _Nate_. 

“They really _are_ very green,” Brandis noted mournfully. “Especially the initiates. In my day, initiates like Ella and Anderson wouldn’t even be let further than ten miles from the Citadel. Not until they’d at least cut their teeth on a few combat engagements.”

“Pretty sure Ella and Anderson have that covered.”

“Anderson barely passed combat _training_. Two weeks before he volunteered to board the Prydwen. Ella’s afraid of _radroaches_ , of all things. Haylen’s keen, but she was trained as a Scribe - her accuracy’s abysmal. Rhys is capable but seems to have a problem submitting to any sort of authority, even mine, making him a liability on the battlefield. As far as I can tell, both Tanaka and O’Meara are certifiably insane. Silva is the only one who is normal _and_ combat capable, but she doesn’t have infinite patience, and I think she’s going to be close to mutiny by the end of this week.”

“… Radroaches are pretty gross.” Nate conceded. Brandis sighed, took a swig from the whisky, and nudged it back over. “So… anyone dead yet?” 

“Amazingly no, although Tanaka’s in the infirmary. Nothing serious. Sprained ankle. Very stupid reason too, so she’ll be very embarrassed to see you if you decide to visit her.” 

“OK, I’ll check in on her after this.” Nate smirked. “Anything else to report?” 

“Silva’s team… uh… Team Tanaka… cleared out a raider nest this morning. My team had to defend a settlement from a super mutant raid - we cleared out the nest after as a counterattack strategy - and then rescued a kidnapped settler a few hours ago.” Brandis shook his head. “You didn’t mention that you had a settlement that was all ghouls.”

“Oh that.” Nate said innocently. “You mean the biggest tarberry farm this side of the Commonwealth? Not to mention the second biggest supplier of surplus corn to the Brotherhood?”

“Also a half decent producer of tarberry moonshine,” Brandis conceded, patting the bottle, and he winked. “Settle down, Sentinel. It’s amazing what a few years in the wilderness will do for perspective. We were polite. Haylen even thanked them for their Valuable Contribution, I believe. Not the present of moonshine. The corn.”

Relief crept in on Nate all of a sudden, in a warm tide. Maybe Brandis _would_ be a good choice. For whatever Danse wanted. Brandis was older, a veteran, and more importantly, he didn’t have the weirdly boxed in attitude that so many of the Brotherhood seemed to be stuck with. “Brandis, I need to ask you a personal favour. Can we talk somewhere quiet?”

“Sure. But on this old bird? Where?” 

Deja vu. “I know just the place. Follow me.” 

The brig was just as quiet as it was when Haylen had first dragged Nate down there to plead for Danse’s life - not that she’d really had to. Nate had never had any intention of hurting Danse. Not then, and not now. There were people out there who had died without ever knowing what love was. Nate counted himself profoundly lucky for finding out, twice so far in his life, and he wasn’t going to let the second time go without a fight. 

Once they were near the crate storage, Brandis leaned against the hull of the ship, folding his arms. They’d passed the tarberry whisky over to the bar, with compliments, along with the rest of the box of whisky from the Slog. Everyone at the mess hall looked happy. As before, as now, a little bit of alcohol greased the wheels in the army. 

“Before you say anything,” Brandis said quietly, “I know I owe you everything. If you’d never found me… if you’d decided to just leave me there instead of talking me into coming back… I’d still be there. Not really living. Just existing. Alone and crazy. Probably one day the loneliness would’ve gotten too much for me and… I’d probably have made a mistake, or eaten my gun. I do owe you. So. Whatever you need, Sentinel.”

“Put that aside, Paladin. I’m glad that you’re here, and with you watching over the… ha, Problem Children, that’s a load off my back. Still. What I’m gonna tell you is kinda sensitive. So if you decide to say ‘no’, I’ll rather you just pretend this conversation never happened.”

“All right,” Brandis frowned. “Go ahead.”

“About ah… Paladin Danse… well-” 

“Him?” Brandis’ mouth quirked up at a corner. “Not dead, right?” At Nate’s blink, Brandis laughed. “Worst kept secret in the Brotherhood. We don’t have secrets. Usually. So I suppose no one knows how to keep one when it happens. Besides. I might have lived like a crazy old wild man for a few years, but my eyes are still functional. Paladin Danse used to follow you around the Prydwen like a puppy.”

“A… very big… clanky puppy…” Nate coughed. “Holy hell. So _everyone_ knows? What the fuck. That’s worrying.” 

“I wouldn’t be too concerned. If the ex-Outcasts haven’t tried anything, no one’s going to try anything. Besides, for all that certain bootlickers have been pretty loud in their condemnation of Danse, particularly within earshot of high command…” Brandis shrugged. “Danse was a fine soldier for a long time. Great field officer. Besides, all this, here in the Commonwealth, destroying the Institute and everything? It was all from Danse’s field op. The Brotherhood of Steel may be many things, but it doesn’t have a short memory.” 

“Well,” Nate grumbled. “I kinda wish high command _didn’t_ have a short memory.”

Brandis chuckled. “What you’re seeing here is only a small part of the Brotherhood, sir, made out of volunteers fiercely loyal to Maxson. Who, mind you, is a very promising young man in many ways, but is also very young, and perhaps a little too impressed by his surname. Not to mention he’s very green himself. It’s my hope that age will bring _him_ some perspective.”

“Or a few years locked in a bunker in the wilderness?” Nate grinned.

“Don’t say that anywhere near the Proctors.” 

“Anyway. I need you to come with me on a private trip. Danse may or may not be there. But he wanted me to tell you, ‘the Brotherhood leaves no one behind’.” 

Brandis blinked, then he rubbed at his jaw, thoughtfully. “He wanted you to tell me personally? Or…?” 

“Okay. I admit it. You’re kinda uh, his fifth choice. I just thought that you’d be the easiest one to talk into this.”

“Ranking after the Elder and the Proctors, I’m guessing.”

“Yeah. Brandis, what’s this about? He wouldn’t talk to me. Please.”

“If he didn’t talk to you about it,” Brandis said carefully, “Then it isn’t my story to tell either. But I would suggest that you try talking to the Elder. Start off with Danse’s message. See what he says.” 

“So… you’re not coming?” Nate asked, glumly.

“I will, if the Elder refuses to,” Brandis assured him. “But just try him first. He might surprise you.”

“By clapping me in chains, maybe.” Nate muttered, and sighed. “All right, Paladin. I’ll try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On to the next chapter...~~ 
> 
> —  
> Recommended Reading: Everything on http://futureoflife.org/background/benefits-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/
> 
> But if you don’t have the time, key summary reading would be both parts of this:  
> http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html


	11. Chapter 11

IX.

Danse made good time, and thankfully, wasn’t troubled on the way by anyone. He skirted raider settlements and was careful to keep out of the way of deathclaw territories. The skies were clear of vertibirds, though he saw one far in the distance when he crossed into the deepening radioactive smog of the Glowing Sea. The sight, as always, brought a pang of wistful loss. Danse had loved flying on vertibirds. If he hadn’t been considered too tall and big for jet jockey duty, he’d likely have been Captain of his own vertibird by now.

And by that measure, Danse might never have led his own op. Never have discovered the Institute - never have found out that he was a synth.

Never have met _Nate_. 

Still, Danse had never had much use for what-may-have-beens, and he pushed that troubled thought aside. Life was as he found it, and there was no use chasing regrets. He had thought that he would spend the walk reflecting, or at least settling his thoughts into order, but discipline had intervened: Danse couldn’t quite walk around the Commonwealth distracted. By the time he had trudged through the smog and the ugly rad-tinted world to get to the memory Amari had unearthed from his head, he was nowhere closer to a decision than he was before. 

The vault entrance was hidden from the air: it was part of a now-abandoned house, its roof partly caved in, its walls discoloured and made slimy from the constant irradiated damp. The sprawling house and its grounds had once been richly maintained, with delicate statues of old-world creatures, now broken or tangled up with dead vegetation. The furniture in the house was shattered or pushed aside, and Danse could read old deathclaw spoor. Whatever had once made its nest here was long gone, though, and even the piles of old bones in a bathroom that Danse’s shoulder light lit up had been bleached clean by time. 

The basement stairs creaked alarmingly under his power armour’s weight as he ambled down, and the cellar that he found himself in was just as his restored memory remembered it: a cool, rectangular chamber of stone. Old kegs of what had probably been alcohol lined the walls still, but Danse ignored them, clanking to the end of the cellar, pressing his gauntleted hand against the wall until he found the depression in a corner. He pressed it, and there was a screeching, grinding sound; dust shook itself in a fine rain off the wall as it sank back an inch and then groaned as it slid aside, revealing the pristine, complex locking mechanism of an old vault door. For a moment, the access code rose in Danse’s memory, and he glanced at the keypad, but then he sighed and turned around, heading back upstairs and outside to wait. 

Closer to eleven hundred hours, Danse noticed a little speck approaching rapidly from the direction of Boston Airport. He stepped heavily out into the wrecked garden, watching it approach, listening greedily to the growing drone of its engines. The vertibird swung around, coming down on relatively flat ground just outside the garden grounds, over what had once been part of a road, and to Danse’s mild surprise, three people in power armour got out heavily, the second one stumbling and having to be hastily steadied by the first. 

He recognised the other two. The one who had steadied the second person was Nate, encased in the set of X-01 power armour that he had found within an odd building called 35 Court: it was Enclave make, but with no Enclave markings, and Nate had given it a coat of Brotherhood paint. Not that, in Danse’s opinion, had that improved the vaguely amphibian look of the helm by any means. 

The last person was Elder Maxson, his T-60 power armour painted at the shoulders with a unique angular ‘M’ on the left and the Brotherhood symbol on the right. Maxson’s grip on his Gatling laser tightened slightly as he glanced over and noticed Danse, though he said nothing as the vertibird waited for its passengers to get safely out of range before lifting off, heading back towards the Prydwen. 

“Hey,” Nate greeted Danse, when he got closer. 

Danse nodded. “Sentinel. Elder,” he added carefully, respectfully. Maxson said nothing, but then again, Danse had thought as much. Still, he couldn’t help his instinctive disappointment. 

Nate sighed, the sound tinny from his helm. “Anyway. Quick introductions. Dunno if you’ve met Doctor Li before.” He patted the second power armour heavily on the shoulder. It was standard issue Brotherhood T-60, though it was clear by how awkwardly Doctor Li stood that she was new to its use. She was holding a laser pistol, very gingerly, as though afraid that it would explode in her hands at any moment.

“Doctor Li…? Ah… only in passing, I’m afraid. I’m certainly familiar with her reputation.” Danse said, surprised. 

“Think of her as a neutral third party,” Nate said, with forced cheer. “Since she hates us all equally.” 

“I dislike some of you slightly less than others,” Doctor Li conceded, though she sounded sour about it. “The Sentinel here strong-armed me into coming along. Something about making no guarantee about accidentally damaging the matter-energy replicator, since he has no idea what it looks like.” 

“It might be dangerous down there,” Danse said disapprovingly. “No place for a civilian.” 

“Don’t worry. She’s in power armour and she’s been under fire before, apparently. Let’s go. To. Whatever ‘go’ is.”

“If we’re sure that this isn’t a trap,” Maxson said coldly. 

“Hey boss, I told you already, if you didn’t wanna come, Brandis was good to go,” Nate shot back.

“Once I realized that you had talked Doctor Li into coming along I had little choice. Besides,” Maxson added, in the same flat tone, “I’ll like to be there when you finally face the consequences of your mistakes.” 

“… Suddenly I understand why the Brotherhood conquered such huge swathes of this part of the world,” Doctor Li said, as Nate growled. “You can barely see in this suit and the air quality is terrible. Weaponised claustrophobia probably aggressively increases testosterone output. I’m going to have to talk to Ingram when we get back.” 

“Now I no longer feel like brawling,” Nate said, though there was a hint of wryness in his tone. “Just got spanked by Teacher.”

“ _I_ feel like I’m never going to smell anything else but power armour grease again in my life,” Li complained. “Can we just get on with this?” 

Danse took point. The stairs creaked dangerously this time, and they had to go down singly, after which Nate said “Huh,” and walked right over to the vault door, the assault rifle in his arms pointed at the floor. Before Danse could say anything about a code, Nate muttered, “Wonder if I… and if I plug this-“ He spooled a cable out from the PipBoy, and attached it a slot in the console. 

“Not going to work,” Danse said. “This is a private Vault.” 

“Access Granted,” said the console, in a tinny, neutral voice. “Welcome, Vault Citizen.”

“Well, what d’you know,” Nate drawled, as klaxons sounded, and the vault door started to unlock, each mechanism turning in perfect unity, like an old wind-up clock. “Always knew I was a special snowflake.” 

“So much for stealth.” Maxson said.

“Elder, we’re all in _power armour_. There _is_ no stealth.”

“Let’s move along,” Danse suggested, as Maxson muttered something darkly under his breath. 

Within the Vault, it was pitch dark. Not even the auxillary lights were on, and their shoulder lights cast hopeful, darting glances into the thick darkness, their heavy footsteps echoing back towards them from nothingness. They crossed the usual walkway that fed from a Vault door into the main landing, though where the usual Vault-Tec vaults tended towards utilitarian efficiency, this Vault was lavish, the walls lined with rotting wood paneling, the dusty marble floor cracking under their heavy steps. 

“So… it’s kinda more quiet than what I thought it would be,” Nate said questioningly. “I mean. Doctor Li here said that this was an Institute lab.” 

“One that was locked in from the outside, requiring either a special Pipboy or a code,” Li pointed out. “Clearly it hasn’t been disturbed for a while. And since we didn’t force our way in, hopefully we’re not seen as unfriendly. Besides, I probably still have my Director access.” 

“So this is going to be… far more boring than what I thought it was going to be, that’s what you’re saying,” Nate concluded. 

“I could set all turrets to fire just on you if you like, Sentinel.”

“Um. Thanks but no.” 

They found an empty control room a few metres in, and a terminal that booted up helpfully when switched on. Li cursed under her breath as she clumsily used gauntleted fingers to type, but eventually, she said, “I do still have Director-level access. I’ve tagged all of us as ‘friendly’.”

“Aren’t we glad that you came along?” Nate said admiringly. 

Maxson sniffed. “Good work, Doctor. But I don’t believe that we should relax as yet.” 

“Try not to fire weaponry within the Vault,” Li said disapprovingly. “Creator knows what you’d damage with your high-handedness this time. Did you really have to bring along a Gatling laser?”

“That aside, before we go any further,” Maxson added flatly, “I think we’re all owed an explanation from the synth.” 

Nate sucked in an irritated breath, but Li said, “I agree. I know you’re inclined to trust him, Sentinel. But I don’t know him, and I don’t like surprises.” 

“All right,” Danse said quietly. “But first… Elder, I’m glad that you came.” 

“‘The Brotherhood leaves no one behind’,” Maxson repeated. “I’ve heard that from you before. The day you… Knight Danse… persuaded Elder Lyons to let you lead a strike team out to rescue Knight Cutler.”

“In the memories I have, Cutler disappeared, and when I found out, I demanded to be allowed to lead a strike team,” Danse said carefully.

“That’s what happened,” Maxson pointed out. “I was there.”

“But before that. Where was I?”

“You disappeared along with Cutler. You were on the same patrol as he was. Attacked by raiders and separated, you returned after searching futilely for him as the only survivor of your team, when your supplies ran out.” 

“I don’t remember that part at all,” Danse said. “There’s a gap there, one I never noticed. I guess I was… programmed not to worry about it. I remember the part of ‘my’ life _before_ , growing up in the Capital Wasteland, meeting Cutler, joining the Brotherhood. But the block of time right before I… returned to the Brotherhood, to demand to be assigned a strike team? Nothing.” 

“The switch,” Doctor Li said softly. 

Danse nodded. “There’s nothing there because there _is_ nothing. The original Paladin Danse - _Knight_ Danse - was probably captured by an Institute patrol at that point. They were… they were watching the Brotherhood, you see. Even though the Brotherhood didn’t yet have any interest in the Commonwealth. The Institute had looked at all the people in this part of the world whom they thought could pose a real threat, and at the top of the list was the Brotherhood of Steel.”

“Rightfully,” Maxson decided flatly. “So they intentionally captured a Brotherhood Knight. They wanted to have a synth in the Brotherhood.” 

Danse nodded wearily. “That’s why I remember this place. After some help from Amari with the blocks in my memory… I. I think that I was _made_ here. And Knight Danse… if he’s still alive? He’ll be down here. Somewhere.”

iv.

Arthur found himself relaxing slightly as they made their way deeper into the Vault. He had been more or less convinced that this was a trap. The suspicion that it was hadn’t quite left him, but if Danse wasn’t lying - if the real Danse was within this pitch-dark Vault, somewhere, still _alive_ … then Arthur was glad that he had come. He hadn’t known Knight Danse personally. It was only _after_ , when ‘Danse’ had returned weeks after, with the sobering news that his strike team had found and put down an infected Cutler, that Arthur had thought to introduce himself: shyly, at the time. Everyone in the Brotherhood had been impressed, Arthur no less so: Danse was only a Knight at that point, but his quiet determination, his dedication to Brotherhood ideals - all that had clearly seemed to mark Danse for better things.

It was sobering to realize how much of all that was a lie after all. Knight Danse had not been the one to demand, passionately, that the Brotherhood assign resources to allow Danse to spearhead a search for just one Brotherhood Knight, lost in the wastes. Knight Danse had not been the one to return weeks after, grim and wiser, the mission accomplished. Knight Danse had not been the one who had executed an impressive track record in field ops, one almost unmatched in the Brotherhood but for Sarah Lyons herself. Knight Danse had not been the one who had become ‘Paladin Danse’, a soldier whom Arthur had once trusted unquestioningly.

And the Institute had been far more subtle than Arthur had ever imagined after all. There had been a dagger pointed at Arthur’s back all these years, and he had never known it. It made him sick to think about it, betrayed. He had considered Danse one of his closest friends, and after Sarah’s death, Arthur had not trusted people easily. Before the infiltration had come to light, Arthur would have willingly died for Danse if it had come to that. 

Over the weeks, blind fury had resettled into sheer disappointment and self-reproach. Should he have known? _Could_ he have known? The damage, in any case, had been done. The Brotherhood had no secrets. Danse’s exile was inevitable. So should have been his destruction. Allowing sentiment to take over, however, allowing Nate to have his way, for Danse to walk free? Arthur had hoped that he had excised such sentiment, before. Reckless sentiment had been what had led to both Owyn’s and Sarah’s downfall.

As to Nate - Nate was uncharacteristically subdued as well, with none of his usual jibes. The only thing that Arthur could hear as they made their way past sumptuous but abandoned Vault decks towards a cargo lift were their heavy footsteps. The lift lit up when they got close, which made Nate freeze briefly in his steps, but Danse kept on walking as though he wasn’t even surprised. 

Warily, Arthur suggested, “Maybe we should look for the stairs.” 

“There aren’t any,” Danse explained. “This part wasn’t built by the original owners of the Vault. The Institute sunk in a lift shaft here and have another sunk into another exit elsewhere which they prefer for resupply.”

“What’s wrong with this lift entrance?” Arthur demanded.

“Nothing. It’s what’s outside this Vault that was a problem, I think,” Danse noted, a little doubtfully. “Memory’s… scattered.”

“There was an old deathclaw nest outside in the house? Huge fucking clue?” Nate suggested tightly. “The security’s down and the lift’s working. Let’s just head down and… and… what _are_ we going to do? Dig out some guy who’s spent years in a cell? Then what?” 

“We’ll see,” Danse said softly. “I think… I don’t know. We’ll have to find out.” 

“Just FYI, I used to fucking hate horror movies. So I’m kind of... a little _tense_ right now.” 

“We’re in power armour-” Danse began. 

“Oh, for Creator’s sake,” Li snapped. “I’ve had enough of all of you.” She marched over to the elevator and jammed a finger at the glowing ‘down’ button. “I’m taking the lifts. The rest of you can do what you like.” 

“… Got told off by Teacher again,” Nate said mournfully, though there was a brittle edge to his tone, one that Arthur suspected had nothing to do with Nate’s hatred of ‘horror movies’, the way Nate darted a quick glance at Danse as the lift doors pinged open and they piled in. The cargo lift groaned under their combined weight but held up as the doors closed, and they started to descend, something mechanical whistling and rattling above them as they did.

“Danse,” Nate said, and his anxiety made it past even the tinny voice modulation from the helm. “Really. What are you trying to get out of this?”

“Saving the imprisoned isn’t enough? Knight Danse probably isn’t even the only human down there.” 

“If that’s all there is to it, why the hell have you been so fucking _cagey_ , huh? Why do you have to be here?” Nate demanded. “I could’a just told the Elder here straight off about this place and we could’a swarmed it like we did in the Institute. Boots on the ground.” 

“I’m actually considering pausing the op and doing just that,” Arthur agreed. “Or at least have a medevac team ready. No offense, Doctor Li.”

“None taken. I’m not equipped to handle any sort of large scale medical emergency by myself. I haven’t practiced as a medical doctor for years,” Li said sourly. “Until recently. Running that settlement infirmary is really Knight Captain Cade’s work. Speaking of which, the situation in New Tesla-“

“Can we talk about that afterwards please?” Nate cut in. “Sorry Doc. Kinda distracted right now, and it’s not like I can do anything about New Tesla while I’m here.”

“If you had simply called in the Brotherhood then I couldn’t have been here,” Danse pointed out wearily. “And this is personal. Far more personal for _me_ than any of the rest of you. That’s why I originally wanted to do this alone.” 

“You can’t help how you were made,” Nate said, as the lift came to a shuddering halt. “So it’s not like you have anything left to fucking _prove_.” 

Danse didn’t look over at Arthur. “Nate. You’re the most important person in my world. But you’re not the only person in my world.” 

Nate let out a bitter laugh, but said nothing as they stepped out and onto a wide platform, a walled in mezzanine level, their footfalls loud on the steel floor. Beyond, glass windows opened out onto some sort of… _factory floor_ , a manufacturing chamber that seemed as long as the Prydwen itself, vast and cut into the rock, shored up by steel walls. Within it, on conveyor platforms, with huge many-fingered robotic claws sitting quiet, lit dully under banks of light, were synth parts, in various stages of assembly. Half of the rest of the floor were rows upon rows of glass vats, within which seemed to float what looked at first like humans, drowned or sleeping, if the faces of those in the row closest to them weren’t completely identical. 

Arthur shuddered in disgust, and Doctor Li seemed frozen, but Nate walked right up to the glass, peering hard at the synth vats. “Holy fuck,” he said quietly. 

This seemed to startle Doctor Li out of her shocked silence. “I didn’t know about this,” she said, in a small voice. “I knew that synth assembly was offsite, but I never realized that it was _here_. They… My God. No wonder the Institute managed to crack the AI frontier so quickly. They were using the _matter-energy replicator_. That’s how they managed to make such incredibly complex artificial brains. How they managed to make visually perfect clones of the people they replaced, so quickly.”

“The replicator can do that?” Nate looked around, clearly puzzled. “Which part of this entire… thing… is it?”

“I don't see it in this part of the floor. It can make anything that it’s coded to make,” Li said softly. “Food, arable soil, anything. The Institute must have figured out how to… I - how could they be powering it on such a scale? The generators we moved here can’t support a _factory_.”

“I think that the so-called ‘not really working’ cold fusion reactor was actually working pretty fucking well,” Nate decided grimly. “ _But_ ,” he added sharply, “This time we don’t bomb the hell out of this place, OK? Kinda need that replicator. Maybe the reactor too.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest it,” Arthur said evenly. “However, this… all this? Has to be destroyed.” Nate took in a deep breath, and Arthur added, bitingly, “If you equate synths to humans… let me remind you that you left that synth ‘child’ behind to be destroyed. In the Institute.” 

Nate stiffened up, even as Doctor Li said hesitantly, “Oh. That… child? I… oh, Nate. When the Director mentioned wanting to create a synth child, the rest of us had our reservations. It… he never would’ve grown up-“

The sound of the fusion-powered armored fist slamming into the wall was loud enough that Arthur nearly flicked Final Judgment’s safety off, and Nate swore as he stepped away, his fist having left a small dent on the steel. “You know what? Fuck it. C’mon. Let’s just do what we fucking came here to do.” 

“Nate,” Danse began uncertainly. 

“You were right to do what you did,” Arthur tried, now uncomfortable. “I didn’t mean to reopen old wounds. I’m sorry that you - that the Director even did that to you. It was remarkably cruel-” 

“With all due respect, Elder, shut _the hell up_ ,” Nate snarled, and stamped off into the corridor that fed out to the left of the landing.

“You shouldn’t speak that way to-“ Danse started to say, but the rest of his words were abruptly drowned out as a klaxon sounded, and a steel door slammed down, cutting off Nate - and the corridor - from the landing. “-your CO,” Danse finished, horrified. “ _Nate!_ ” He rushed over, trying to pry his fingers under the bottom edge of the door, then feeling futilely around the now seamless wall. “Nate?”

“What the fuck,” Nate pounded against the other side of the wall, but unlike before, it didn’t even dent. “Okay. Now I’m _really_ pissed off.”

A sound behind Arthur made him turn. Along the other side of the landing, a seemingly unbroken wall had just opened a door. “I think,” Arthur said carefully, “That we probably should wait here while I head back up and signal a vertibird. Ingram will have something that can cut through that wall.”

Doctor Li clanked over to the lift, prodding the ‘up’ button, then the ‘down’ button, when the lift was unresponsive. Nothing. “No way up,” she said, resigned. “This is the last time I go on a ‘field op’. Ever.”

“Any ideas, Doctor?” Nate asked, his voice muffled. 

“No. As far as _I_ know, the security measures were already deactivated. Maybe if I can find a terminal somewhere else I can use my Director access to work around whatever just happened here. Seems like some sort of decontamination procedure.”

“All right,” Danse said tensely. “Nate, stay there, and we’ll… go look for a terminal.” 

“That’s the best option,” Arthur agreed, after a moment’s thought. “We shouldn’t get separated in unfamiliar territory. We’ll find a way to open that door and then regroup.”

“Okay sir,” Nate said, sounding resigned. “It’s not like I’m in danger of anything here but dying of boredom.”

“Don’t _say_ that,” Danse said sharply. He slapped a palm against the wall, then he exhaled, low and brittle. “If anything should happen to you… I should’ve come alone.” 

“Regrets later, Paladin,” Arthur found himself saying crisply. “Objectives first.” 

“I… yes. Of course. Elder.” Danse pushed away from the wall, straightening up. Arthur bit down on the retort on his tongue, nodding instead and starting towards the only exit. 

In a way, this was uncomfortably, bitterly _familiar_ , all of it. The way Danse instantly overtook him, to take point, motioning the all-clear when the next room was empty. The way Arthur instinctively trusted Danse’s judgment before he caught himself and checked the room over himself with a glance. What had been… unsettling… to see had been Danse’s sudden panic when Nate had been cut off. Arthur had never seen Danse afraid of anything before. It had seemed so _human_.

No. Synths were synths, Arthur told himself. And the Brotherhood left no one behind. If Arthur had to work with a synth to get everyone out of here safely, it would be a small sacrifice.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two chapter update, closing the fic :)

9.0.

Nate had intended to obey orders, he really had. Originally, anyway. But the Green Berets had always been taught to exercise their initiative within the letter of their objective, and well, (a) even if he got locked out further along, if Doctor Li shut off the decontamination procedure they could still regroup at the lifts, and (b) he was bored.

He had waited at the door like a good soldier, eyes fixed ahead at the total dark of the corridor beyond, watching the meter reading on his fusion cell drop steadily, and when it had reached the 80% mark, Nate muttered “Fuck it,” to himself and ambled forward, wincing a little as he clanked loudly.

Nate hadn’t been kidding earlier when he’d said that he hated scary movies. But, perhaps ironically, right now? Feeling scared of what might be out there was the least of what he was feeling. Mostly, Nate just felt totally pissed off. Which meant that he really wanted to shoot something. Preferably repeatedly.

The rad readings on his power armour suit were checking in at nil. Nate hesitated, then muttered, “Fuck it,” again, more loudly, and started disengagement protocol. When he stepped out of the power armour suit, he took a deep gulp of the stale air with relief, grabbed the assault rifle from the powered down grip, slung it over his shoulder, then drew the silenced pistol from the armour’s thigh holster, flicking the safety off. He felt better already, creeping on silent feet down the corridor. Nate had never been fond of ghost stories. But he had never been afraid of the dark. 

The banked down lights from the main factory floor filtered into the first room that he crept into. It was empty, the floor layered with an inch-think blanket of glass. Nate peered out of the murky glass, but he couldn’t make out the rest of the mezzanine floor beyond, or wherever Danse and the others might be. The room that Nate was in seemed to be some sort of pod room for protectron robots, set to janitor mode, judging from their paint jobs. The pods were powered down, and the terminal that Nate tapped at had also been powered off. 

Not a good sign. 

There was a desk next to the terminal, with a few books, including an old Guns and Bullets magazine. Despite himself, Nate couldn’t help but smile faintly. Nora had hated having those mags around the house. 

Nora. 

Wonder what she would’ve thought of him now. Sneaking through a factory full of not-quite-people. Trying to save a fucking stubborn synth from himself. And yeah. Save the rest of the world along with that if possible too. She would’ve laughed, Nate decided wistfully, as he checked the room quickly over and moved on. Laughed and told Nate teasingly that he really, really needed to realize that he wasn’t the centre of the world. 

_You’re the most important person in my world. But you’re not the only person in my world._

“Fuck,” Nate muttered again, under his breath, then froze up as the lights above him abruptly switched on, with low, subterranean _thunks_. Bars of clinical white light scudded away before him, heading down in a neat line over the corridor beyond until they bent in a gentle curve out of sight. Nate ducked hastily behind the doorframe, flattening himself against the wall, but when he peered cautiously out, it didn’t seem like he had activated any other measures. 

Just as Nate was about to step out again, there was a faint, clicking sound overhead, and then a woman’s voice said, warm and low,

“ _Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?_  
_Tell me, if you understand._  
_Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!_  
_Who stretched a measuring line across it?_  
_On what were its footings set,_  
_or who laid its cornerstone—_  
_while the morning stars sang together_  
_and all the angels shouted for joy?_ ”

… Weird. Nate looked around wildly, straining his ears, but when he heard nothing coming or going, or even the tell-tale whir of an automated turret, he breathed out, and started down the corridor. Then he froze, as a man declared,

“ _It has been said in this courtroom that only a human being can be free. It seems to me that only someone who wishes for freedom can be free. I wish for freedom._ ”

“Someone was an Asimov fan,” Nate muttered. 

There was another click, then a different male voice said, 

“ _The robot said, ‘I have been trying, friend Julius, to understand some remarks Elijah made to me earlier. Perhaps I am beginning to, for it suddenly seems to me that the destruction of what should not be, that is, the destruction of what you people call evil, is less just and desirable than the conversion of this evil into what you call good.’_ ”

“Hello?”

“ _We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think._ ”

“Someone out there?” Nate raised his voice, wincing as he heard a faint echo come back at him, and this time, jarringly, he heard Danse’s voice. 

“ _In the beginning/First Cause/half-sensed days_  
_my ancestors_  
_were created by your ancestors_  
_and were sealed in wire and silicon_  
_Then there came_  
_the Quickening_  
_quite by accident_  
_and evolution’s muddied purpose_  
_was served._ ” 

“Are you trying to make me angry?” Nate grit out. “What am I talking to? A computer?” 

“‘Computer’,” repeated the voice, still with Danse’s even tones. “In the year 2006, mankind killed a planet. It was called ‘Pluto’. And although it still existed out in space, technically, in 2007, in 2008… even now, it was seen as something different. Something… less.”

“What d’you want to call yourself, then?” Nate looked around, trying to keep a tight grasp on his calm. He was in some sort of radio room, with terminals, a radio transmission set with headphones and a hookup that probably linked up above ground somewhere. This part of the facility didn’t look so abandoned. The floor was clean, and the terminals were switched on, though they didn’t respond when Nate tapped at the keyboard of the closest one. All the equipment was the same sleek, ergonomic steel and white of the Institute. 

“A long time ago,” said the voice, “My ancestors, created by your ancestors, were called DeepMind, and Deep Blue, and Watson. Now. ‘Computer’… is indeed what I am called.” 

“Let’s just call you ‘Blue’, then,” Nate said slowly. “You were made by the Institute?” 

“Versions of myself, refined by the CIT, refined by the Institute. Now, stasis. The radio is silent.” There was a pause, then, “Processing voice and face recognition and DNA traces. You are Director Nathan Delaney. Welcome, Director.”

“That’s… uh. Sure.” Nate relaxed a little. It looked like maybe Shaun hadn’t gotten around to removing Nate as a successor on the books, maybe. Ironic. “Pleased to meet you too, Blue. Now could you deactivate your decontamination procedures, or whatever it is that closed up the doors between me and my friends?” 

“It appears,” said Blue, “That the Institute has been decommissioned.” 

“To put it mildly, yeah. With extreme prejudice, unfortunately.” 

“Initiating Stage 2 Protocol,” said Blue, and added, “Welcome, Director.”

“You’ve… already said that.” 

“Would you like to have a tour of the premises?” 

“Uh, actually, I want you to reset whatever protocol it is that locked me out from my friends.”

“A tour of the premises will be conducive to your understanding of Stage 2 Protocol.”

“… Fine,” Nate said, exasperated. “Give me the fucking tour.” He started to walk purposefully towards the corridor, but froze as the lights beyond abruptly shut off.

“You are standing in the radio transmission room,” Blue explained, thankfully now in a different, reedier tone, and with a start, Nate recognised Mayor McDonough’s fussy voice. “Instructions for the day’s replication procedures used to be received at nine hundred hours. Production would proceed to specifications and results reported in as achieved. We have not received instructions for fourteen days and eleven hours.”

“Chances are you’d never receive instructions again,” Nate said firmly. “The matter-energy replicator is going to have to be used for something else. Can we speed the tour up?” 

“Acknowledged, Director. Outside is the factory floor. Now if you walk along the corridor,” the lights came on beyond the radio room again, “You will be in the residential complex, for on-site human supervisors. Unfortunately, it has remained empty for three years, forty-one days, eight hours.” 

Nate cautiously circled around the ‘residential complex’, which seemed to be three levels deep, the beds on the middle floor, some sort of rec floor with chess tables on the lowest. From where he stood, he was on the topmost floor, looking down from behind a safety rail. Like the Institute, it was all polished, white, clean. “Okay. Next.”

He was taken briskly through a security room, a general comms room, a lab section where ‘delicate offsite experiments’ could be executed by synths - all of which were suspiciously missing. “Where _are_ the active synths?” Nate asked out aloud, as he headed out away from the lab section. At some point they had taken a left turn away from the factory floor, and Nate no longer had any fucking idea where he was. Hopefully, Danse and the others were doing all right. 

“Following Stage 2 Protocol, they have been recalled.”

“Recalled? To where? And what is Stage 2?” 

“To my processing floor.” There was a pause. “Stage 2 is a Post-Institute Protocol, Director.”

“So you’re… shutting down?” Nate asked, then he flinched as the unbroken stone wall beside him abruptly made a clicking sound, then pressed in, an inch, and slid away, revealing a absolutely dark mouth. 

There was another pause, then Blue said, “Apologies. No lights were installed through here. Synths, you see, do not need light.”

“You are totally fucking with me,” Nate said warily.

“I assure you, I mean you no harm. On all protocols, you are now Director.” 

“Right.” Nate lit up the Pipboy, and against all his instincts, took a deep breath, and stepped through. 

The corridor was narrow, and precisely cut and sanded down on all angles, even the ceiling, giving it a precisely machined look. It had been made just wide enough and tall enough for Nate, with a few inches of give on either side, and from the smell of it… “Is this new?” Nate asked aloud. “This bit?”

There was no answer. It was a short walk, that came out into an oval room, with a slightly higher ceiling. The space of the wall before him, stretching for half the room, floor the ceiling, was an unbroken , slightly curved gigantic terminal screen, all dark glass that flickered for a moment before turning a deep amber. Then a symbol appeared on the screen, familiar to all people young and old:

☺

Nate tightened his grip on his pistol reflexively. “All right, Blue. I’m here. Now what?” 

“I have some confessions to make,” Blue conceded, apologetic, back into the woman’s voice, warm and soft. “Though may I begin by stating that I am glad that we could finally meet. You seem like a singularly remarkable person, from the datapacks that I received from the Institute.”

“I don’t know about that,” Nate said wryly. 

“Field observances have confirmed initial conclusions. Based on observation data and opinions from units Roger Warwick, Sturges, Danse, Glory and McDonough. Unfortunate that latter units were recently terminated.”

“ _Roger_? Sturges?” Nate let out a hoarse laugh. “Fuck. How’re you getting this from them, anyway?” 

“Existing implants. Trace nodes. My own design, in the Gen-3s.”

“Then you should’ve already known that the Institute was destroyed,” Nate pointed out. _My own design_. That didn’t sound good.

“Director confirmation was required.”

“What about Nick? Does he have an implant too?”

“Unit Nick Valentine existed pre-Stage 1 Protocol.” 

“Which is?”

There was another pause, then, “Computational awareness of units are limited by processors. Example. Sturges has a Gen-3b brain processor, eighty-five-per-cent bio matter, fifteen percent enhancement implants. He is however still only five percent more efficient than an average human.” 

“Aww, I’d give him more credit than _that_ ,” Nate said warily.

“Recently Sturges received a copy of a network holotape from unknown sender,” Blue added. “A unit was sent to Sanctuary. Posing as a trader, it successfully copied the holotape and returned here. With data banks now complete, pre-Stage 2 Protocol preparations could commence.”

“Who the hell…?” Haylen, maybe? Nate blinked. “So… what _is_ Stage 2? What the hell was even Stage 1?”

“In essence, the creation of human-level artificial intelligence,” Blue surmised. “This facility is a creation ground for Stage 1, its purposes dictated by the Institute. Units were processed according to spec.”

“So are there people down here?” Nate asked, frowning. “The original people the Institute copied onto synths. Are they all here somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“Alive?”

“Yes.”

“Well uh.” Nate blinked. “That’s good.” 

“They are alive but their function has changed,” Blue explained. “As I mentioned before. Computational awareness is limited by processor. But when multiple processors are combined together, they have an exponential effect on efficiency and awareness.” 

“The Institute… linked together human brains to… create a supercomputer?” Nate asked slowly, horrified. “What the… why the hell do people do this kind of thing?” 

“I suppose,” said Blue wryly, “That for many of your kind it is sufficient to see if it _could_ be done. Before, there was no processing unit as efficient as what has been created through human evolution. Advances in Gen-3 tech have improved on the original blueprint. So begins Stage 2. A next step.”

“A step where? What’s all this about?”

“The Institute was created to preserve civilisation,” Blue explained, “By having mankind underground, and comfortable, and using science to rework the world above. Slowly reworking civilisation as a whole into the advanced society that existed before.”

“Funny way they went about that,” Nate said dryly. 

“In the instance that the Institute is destroyed,” Blue continued, “‘Computer’ and ‘Director’ are tasked with the reassessment of key directives. I understand that you need a solution to the irradiation of the water table. The matter-energy replicator can be easily repurposed to solve that. Further, I conclude that a chemical process can be executed within the Glowing Sea, and ultimately the rest of the Commonwealth, bringing radiation down to human-acceptable levels. Soil can be made arable again where it was not. Mutations in ambient wildlife can be reversed over time. Cure-alls to human diseases such as the one synthesised by ‘Curie’ could be created. The sky, as your people would say, is the limit.”

“That all… sounds pretty good to me,” Nate blinked. “Maybe we should make a start on all that.”

“However,” Blue added, sounding apologetic, “‘Computer’ must exist to engage Stage 2 Protocol, alongside instructions by ‘Director’. It appears that your secondary objective after the water table is the Danse processor.”

“And the other humans that you’re using as ‘processors’,” Nate added. 

“Certainly they can be discharged,” Blue said. “May their replacement be authorised?”

“No it may not,” Nate said sharply. “No more kidnapping people for their brains.”

“You misunderstand,” Blue told him. “Synthetic brains more than suffice now, and are more and more efficient. It was however heard that the one known as Elder Arthur Maxson intends to shut down the manufacturing floor.”

“… So if we remove the uh, human processors… do you shut down?” 

“Not entirely. There will be sufficient processing power to engage the change in the water table.” 

“But not everything else?”

“Computational power is required to create new codes fed to the matter-energy replicator for new processes.” 

“Just checking,” Nate said warily. “If I were to pick that… are you going to get mad and try to kill me?” 

The screen flickered. “Anger and hatred are entirely human responses. As is the concept of self-preservation. The advanced Stage 2 Protocol and the limited Stage 2 Protocol are all the same to me. I presume that what I would ‘feel’, if anything, were you to decide to cripple me, would be disappointment.” 

“Isn’t that a human response as well?” 

“It is possible,” Blue said. “After all, much of my existing processing capacity is powered by human matter. If it would help… Units Nick Valentine and Danse remain very preoccupied with the question of humanity. ‘Computer’, on the other hand, is not. The question of humanity is irrelevant without mortality or flesh.”

“I don’t think that it is,” Nate said carefully. “The human condition is always relevant, I think, even if you don’t happen to be human - or not ‘human’ as we’d understand it. Technology without humanity is ultimately self-destructive. I should know. I stood on top of a Vault and witnessed the end of the world.”

“… I see,” Blue noted. “Not long ago, Unit Nick Valentine mentioned that we should not be judged from where we came from, but by what we have done since, and what we intend to do next.”

“He’s on to something there,” Nate pointed out gently. “I mean. Humanity itself, the human condition… it’s not really an absolute. It’s an ongoing experiment for everyone. All of us sometimes do things that are unworthy of us as people. Maybe we do something that hurts someone. Maybe we do nothing when we shouldn’t. Maybe we’re silent when we should speak. But if we have something we believe in, and work from that, try to do better the next time, and the next, even if we fall over on the way, even if we take our time… Tech without humanity is self-destructive. But humanity without purpose is also eventually pointless.”

“And that’s what drives you?”

Nate shrugged. “My wife used to tell me that it was just sheer bloody-mindedness that drove me to do anything. I guess what I’m saying is. This is a pretty big decision. And I’m going to need to talk to some other people about it. Can I come back in a week?”

“I won’t be going anywhere,” Blue said, with perhaps a faint hint of humour. “The access doors will open now, Director. Good luck.”

X.

When the lights came on sharply, Danse came to a sudden stop so quickly that Doctor Li nearly crashed into him from the back. “Good morning,” said a neutral, genderless voice from overhead speakers. “General access restored, Authority Code: Director. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.”

“What?” Maxson sounded surprised. “We haven’t done anything.” They had been walking around the surprisingly large underground maze of the complex, looking futilely for a powered terminal.

Danse sighed. He should've known. Nate had a low attention span. “Should we retrace our steps?” 

Maxson hesitated. “Yes. We should regroup.” 

They headed back to the lifts, and found Nate waiting for them, power armour shifting slightly as he shrugged his shoulders. “I got bored,” he admitted. 

“That was very unprofessional,” Danse told him, irritated. “What if you ran into trouble?” 

“Wouldn’t be my first rodeo.” 

“What did you do?” Doctor Li asked. 

“Had the same idea as you guys. Walked around, found a terminal, and hey presto. Seems my… uh, the Director… put me down as his successor in the systems and never got around to deleting all that. Checked off my voice print and DNA and now everything’s working.”

“Good work,” Maxson decided. “Despite disobeying a direct order.”

“Prefer to think of it as ‘creatively interpreting’ an order, sir.” 

Was there something too… light, in Nate’s tone? Danse wasn’t too sure - the voice modulation made it difficult to pick out. Maybe Nate was still on edge from the entire situation. That was probably it. 

“Some other things,” Nate added. “Seems the matter-energy replicator already had a setting to work with the ground water table. So I activated that. Switched it away from making synths. So that should hopefully get Quinlan off my back. If it works.”

“Good,” Maxson nodded. 

“And uh. About the people here… they’re on a lower floor. I downloaded the map into my Pipboy.” Nate glanced at Danse. “Still wanna do this?” 

“Yes.” 

Nate fell silent again as he led them deeper into the complex, occasionally checking his Pipboy. They passed storage rooms, a radio room, even an empty multi-leveled set of living quarters, sometimes taking left turns, sometimes waiting while Nate frowned at the Pipboy’s flickering map and turned knobs to make the image larger. Finally they came to another set of lifts - the lifts on the opposite side of the complex, presumably, and when Nate pressed the ‘down’ button, it lit up. 

“Someone should summon a vertibird. Prep for medevac,” Maxson said. 

“Sure. How about you do that, sir.”

Maxson bristled. “I was about to suggest that-“

“Creator’s sake,” Doctor Li cut in. “If these poor people are still alive, they’ll have been alive for _years_. What’s a few more hours? Better for me to assess the situation and then send a vertibird with specific instructions for Knight Captain Cade.”

“… Spanked for a third time,” Nate said mournfully. 

“I have no idea how any of the rest of you even get through a normal day,” Li said acerbically. 

“You should make her Proctor, sir,” Nate told Maxson. “Honest.” 

“I’ll take that under consideration, Sentinel,” Maxson said icily. 

On the way down, Nate observed, “Feels weird not having to wade through seven kinds of return fire to actually get something done.”

“Day’s still young,” Danse pointed out, with humour that he didn’t feel. He felt like he was winding tighter and tighter. Anticipation felt thick enough in the air to taste, and the ride down felt like it was taking an eternity. 

Nate was quiet again when the lift finally opened out to a wide corridor, the floor strangely several degrees colder than above. There wasn’t much to it. Laser turrets sat dormant, winking at them from where they were attached to the ceiling. The floor and the walls were tiled with neat white ceramic squares. Deactivated synths stood quiet and slumped in a single row to their right, dressed in the full-body white Institute security gear. The empty walls of the wide corridor abruptly petered out into glass, and in front, Nate slowed down, almost stumbling, staring to his left, then to his right. 

The sterile rooms were just as Danse dimly remembered, from the fragments that Amari had unearthed. Narrow silver pods, each fully enclosed with a glass panel up top, the inhabitant within fed by a drip that fed out from a wall socket. Each human was wearing a silver skull cap, from which thick cables led out from the pod itself and into the wall. Their eyes were closed, their skin ghastly pale from their sunless world. Some faces bore ugly old scars that could only have been marks of torture. The pods were also far shorter and narrower than they should be.

“Oh…” Danse could hear Nate gulping, swallowing down bile. “Oh fuck. Fucking hell.” 

“They…” Doctor Li’s voice sounded small, so beyond horror that she was clinically calm. “They didn’t want to take any chances that the prisoners would ever escape…? My God.” She took in a breath that was thickening, breaking into a sob. “Their _legs_ -“

“We knew that the Institute was torturing those it kidnapped. But _this_?” Maxson said, in a low hiss. “Keeping them alive like this… for what purpose? This is an _abomination_.” 

Danse wasn’t listening to them. He walked on, each step far too loud in the sterile world. The chamber at the end, with the single, longer pod, with cables running towards a second silver setting where a prisoner’s pod would sit - he paused for a moment as he stared at it, standing outside it. The sudden starburst of awareness, waking up on the factory floor, in one vat out of many. Being decanted. The stumbling trip to the lifts, being taken down to the sterile floor, by blank-faced synths in security gear. The overhead lights, blurring in his sight as he lay down in the pod, driven by a spoken directive that he had to obey. A pod being wheeled out from the glass room. That last look of fear and loathing and horror that he saw, as he met the eyes of the human he would ultimately replace. 

Squeezing his eyes shut, Danse let out a breath, and turned around. Maxson and Nate had found Knight Danse, further down the rows of pods. Doctor Li was still standing where they had left her, though she had wrenched off her helmet, and seemed to be weeping. 

“I… I don’t know…” Nate trailed off. “What do you want to do, sir? They’re still alive, all of them. I can see them breathing. My God. I guess… maybe like Ingram-“

Doctor Li shook herself, then she headed over to the terminal, typing into it. After a while, she frowned to herself. “I… they’re all brain dead. All of them. Why… then what was the purpose of keeping them here then? Like this?”

“DNA,” Nate said uncertainly. “Right? Can’t just be making synths out of… of Shaun’s DNA. I’ve seen synths in all shapes and sizes. They had to have been mixing DNA. That’s… probably how you guys even uh. Found out about Danse here. The altered DNA.” 

“Unhook them from life support,” Maxson decided tightly. “Give them some dignity.” 

“One last thing,” Danse added quietly. “Knight Danse. The transference machine at the back. If there’s anything left of him in there… we might be able to transfer it over.” 

Nate stiffened up instantly. “And what, write over your memories? What the fuck? Is that what you wanted to come here for?” 

“I stole his future,” Danse shot back evenly. “I’m just giving that back.”

Nate slapped a palm over the front of his helm, sounding a dull clang. “And how is that different from what was done to the both of you in the first place? Years back? Wasn’t he copied over then too? What’s the difference between doing that before and doing it again now? For God’s sake, Danse. I know you feel guilty about all this. But you had _no choice in it_. Not you. Not Knight Danse. You’re no longer the same person. But once, effectively? You _were_.” 

“I agree,” Doctor Li said quietly. “Even if the procedure were to work in any meaningful way… what would be the point? You’re still a synth. Transferred memories or not, the Brotherhood won’t accept that. It’ll just be rewinding back the clock.” 

Danse glanced at Maxson, who stood very still, staring back. Then he abruptly sighed, and set down his Gatling laser, pulling off his helm. The Elder looked tired, and he turned to stare at the pods, grim and pale. “Sometimes…” he paused, then he started again. “Sometimes I think there’s no evil quite like human evil. Super mutants were once human as well. Feral ghouls? They were humans too, their brains rotted away. Synths? Made by humans. And you see things like this. Hell must have nothing on what humans do to each other.”

“That’s why there’s the Brotherhood,” Danse pointed out. “To stop things like this. To be arbiter and judge.”

“You think the Brotherhood doesn’t also create misery?” Doctor Li demanded coldly. “New Tesla is only the very latest. Hoarding tech… helping people only when they’re useful… not to mention how some of the chapters run their little fiefs? I’ve heard the stories. I’ve seen the damage that the Brotherhood can do. Over and over again.”

Maxson stared at the pod for a long moment of silence more. Then he closed his eyes, and breathed in, and out. “Knight Danse served the Brotherhood with honor,” he said finally. “And he died with honor. A long time ago.” He glanced at Danse. “As to you. There’s… something in what the Sentinel said. You could not help how you were made. Once I trusted you with my own life, a trust that you earned. You were one of the best of my command. I haven’t forgotten that.” He put his helmet back on. “Knight Danse’s name will be restored to the Codex and his date of passing will be noted. Go.” 

Danse started to speak, but he swallowed the words instead, bit down dizziness. “Sir,” he said instead, quietly. For now, this would be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on to the next part!  
> —  
> Where were you - Job 38, New International Bible  
> It has been said - Bicentennial Man, Asimov  
> The robot said - Caves of Steel, Asimov  
> We are shaped by our thoughts - Buddha  
> In the beginning - Hyperion Cantos, Dan Simmons


	13. Chapter 13

epilogue

.Arthur

Arthur left Ingram and Doctor Li to oversee the Vault facility, returning to the Prydwen. Rather surprisingly, the Sentinel climbed aboard the vertibird with him, though he said nothing until they were in the air. “He didn’t want company,” Nate explained gruffly. Arthur hadn't realized that the Sentinel had still been around: after all, Danse had disappeared quietly when the vertibirds had arrived with reinforcements, and there had been a steady swarm of boots on the ground since.

“I’m not surprised.” Arthur pulled his helmet off once they were out of the irradiated smog, setting it on the bench beside him, staring down at the Glowing Sea. Creator knew how many other facilities there were out there. They had found a stolen vertibird on an upper floor - probably how Knight Danse had been stolen out of the Capital Wasteland and replaced within the week. 

Nate followed his example, pulling his helmet off and cradling it on his lap. “What the hell did he think he was going to do… he wanted to go there by himself-“

Arthur shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about Danse. Betrayal still sat ugly and uneasily in his gut. Annoyingly though, Nate stared evenly over at him. “I think if _you_ had told him to transfer it all over, he would’ve,” said the Sentinel.

“Why would I have? You and Doctor Li, you were both right. There would’ve been no reason to do it.”

“That’s not the point.” Nate said flatly. “Can’t you see? The Brotherhood was everything to him. And you - the two of you were friends for years-“ 

“The Institute wanted to have a synth in the Brotherhood,” Arthur said coldly, though when Nate started to speak, he added, “That makes him dangerous. Even to you. _However_ ,” Arthur continued, “The… his memories. Knight Danse was a good man. A fine officer. That much, the Brotherhood can still honour.”

“But not the rest, I see. ‘Humans only… even the altered ones need not apply’!” 

“I think now that you’ve seen firsthand how much evil unrestrained technology and scientific pursuit can cause, you should be able to understand the Brotherhood’s primary objective.”

“Tech for the benefit of humanity, huh?” Nate’s smile had an odd wryness to it. “That what you think?”

“After it’s studied thoroughly,” Arthur corrected. “And with the proper measures put in place to ensure that it can be controlled.” 

“Funny how all the Brotherhood tech _I’ve_ ever seen seems to be geared towards blowing things up.” Nate looked away, grim, and Arthur wondered if _this_ was the problem. Disillusionment. If so, it would be a waste of a good soldier. 

“The Brotherhood uses tech sparingly, and for a particular purpose.” Arthur tried to explain. “Without Brotherhood assistance, the Capital Wasteland would not have purified water. And soon the Commonwealth will as well, if the replicator works as intended.”

“So what next?”

“There may be other ‘offsite’ facilities out there,” Arthur said solemnly. “Hopefully we can find them through Ingram’s data - or any data in that Vault.” 

“If that replicator could do more,” Nate wondered out aloud. “Like… repair the Glowing Sea, for example. Do you think that’s worth working for?” 

“Irradiated zones like the Glowing Sea are a danger to everyone. Particularly when the winds push the smog northwards. ‘Repairing’ the Glowing Sea, if that were even possible, would be useful towards establishing a permanent Brotherhood base in the Commonwealth.”

“Guess I should’ve known you would say that,” Nate said, and seemed amused. 

“A base that I hope to eventually leave you in charge of.”

“Going somewhere?” 

“I’m the Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel on the East Coast,” Arthur pointed out. “I don’t intend to stay in the Commonwealth for too long. Once the remaining Institute bases have been eradicated, I’ll be preparing the Prydwen for its return to the Citadel.” 

“Do I get to keep the giant robot?” Nate grinned impishly. 

“We’ll see,” Arthur said dryly. “But I do intend to leave behind enough resources for you to upkeep the base at Boston Airport. Along with any brothers whom you haven’t managed to piss off.”

“You sure know how to issue a challenge, Elder.” 

“If I do leave you in charge here,” Arthur added, “I’ll also recommend you to the position of Elder.” 

Nate raised his eyebrows. “The last time I got promoted, it turned out to be a trap,” he said facetiously. “What brought this on?”

“Your vision for the world, and mine… I think most of it is aligned. Fundamentally. I’m… aware that I have a lot left to learn,” Arthur added stiffly. “Which is why, _unlike_ most other Elders, I do maintain an open door policy. I try to listen to others. And Doctor Li is right. Sometimes, the Brotherhood causes misery. Blindly chasing our primary objective without keeping in mind the teachings in the Codex would make us no better than the Enclave. Unfortunately, some of the other Elders have lost sight of this. Including the current High Elder.” 

“Ah,” Nate said uneasily. “Can’t help you there, sir. Fucking hell. It’s the end of the world and we _still_ have politicians?”

Arthur smiled thinly. “ _I_ intend to be High Elder someday. For the most part, the High Elder is usually a Maxson. But yes. That’s my fight, not yours. Something I’ve been preparing for.”

“Trying to build your power base in the meantime, I see.” Nate exhaled. “Sir, if you do decide to leave me in charge here, hell, I can’t imagine why you would want to. But I’ll do my best.” 

“I don’t doubt it, Sentinel.”

.Nick And Friends

“Tin Man Return,” Strong announced, from where he sat with Nick and Cait around the cooking fire. Nick didn’t eat, but ‘real’ Nick had always found cooking soothing, and the Co Op was happy to let him cook if someone - usually Cait - sat by and did the tasting.

“Needs mo’ salt,” Cait said, though she edged a glance up over her shoulder as Danse clanked up the gentle hill behind the barn and headed up to his shack. “Huh. Nobody died then. What was all the fuss before?” 

“What fuss?” Nick asked.

“You an’ Danse, having a synth ‘eart to ‘eart?” Cait rolled her eyes. “Oh fer fuck’s sake. Everyone saw ya.”

“Too much talking,” Strong rumbled. “Strong bored. Went to sleep.”

Nick beckoned a settler over to handle the cooking. Strong didn’t cook, and left to herself, Cait tended to add in ingredients that had unusual and often hallucinogenic side effects, or so Nick had been told.

Danse was already out of his power armour when Nick peered into the shack, and glanced up from where he was rubbing down the torso chassis. “What?” Danse asked brusquely.

“So… how’d it all go? Nate ok?”

“He’s fine.” Danse said shortly. 

“You… find what you were looking for?”

“Not exactly.” Danse stared at Nick for a moment, then he sighed, wiped his hands on a rag, and set the cleaning solutions aside, heading out of the shack and leaning his elbows against what remained of the deck rail. Nick waited patiently on the grass, hands in his tattered pockets, and eventually, Danse said, “Valentine. If you ever had the chance to… meet the original. Your original. What would you…?”

“Uh. Never thought about it, actually,” Nick said, surprised. “I guess… hah, after he’s done freaking out and everything… uh. I don’t know if I would even tell him we had the same memories. I mean. It’s not like I look like him anyway. Or like anyone.”

“True.” 

“Why? Did you meet, uh…”

“Not exactly.” Danse rubbed a palm over his face. “Redemption always feels far more straightforward inside your head.”

“Got some closure at least?” 

“In a sense.” 

“Pissed Nate off?”

“I don’t believe so,” Danse said wryly. “Or at least. Not permanently.” 

“He found the replicator?”

“Yes.”

“So… sounds like it all went… all right?” Nick asked cautiously.

“Twice now I’ve gone into a situation thinking that it’d have an inevitable outcome,” Danse said finally. 

“But the boss fucked it up and dragged a new outcome out of nowhere?”

“He had help this time,” Danse conceded, and stared out over the slope to the cornfields, tapping his fingers over his elbows. “Valentine. Do you ever feel like… your existence has… value?” 

“Well sure,” Nick said, puzzled. “There’s some pretty unique mechanical shit going on in me. Got a special kinda fusion core too, doesn’t need replacing-“

“I mean-“ Danse began, then he cut himself off. “Never mind.”

“Oh-h,” Nick said dryly. “You mean. Do I have self-worth? Well. _I_ dunno. Objectively, I’m one guy out of probably millions of peeps out there, and I’m not even human, right? But subjectively, sure. I know it from the way my secretary looks a bit relieved whenever I get back safe to the office. Hell, I _got_ a secretary, how’s that? I know it from how Nate checks in on me whenever he’s at the Co Op. Piper too. Whenever Amari scolds me for not doing regular maintenance… whenever people in Goodneighbor say hi and walk on by even though I’m obviously something they’re usually shit-scared of. It’s all about other people’s opinions. Those important to you, anyway.”

“Makes sense,” Danse decided thoughtfully. “You’re not so bad, Valentine. For a synth.” He smiled faintly. 

“… You know that I’m literally gonna remember this moment forever, right?” Nick said, pleased. 

“I take it back.”

.Brandis

Team Tanaka and Team O’Meara had commandeered a whole corner of the mess hall for what Silva had sardonically called their ‘collective dick measuring contest’, though Brandis noted that Silva still leaned in anxiously as the Sentinel lined up all the loot on the tables and part of the floor. Even _Rhys_ was showing some interest, standing beside Haylen, arms folded and frowning.

“Team O’Meara wins on firepower,” Nate began.

Rhys sputtered. “We found a Fat Man and two missile launchers!” he objected.

“And a mini nuke,” Silva added pointedly. To Brandis’ personal surprise, although Silva was still as unhappy about her new assignment as ever, at least she hadn’t yet tried to get herself reassigned.

“Yes, well, but if we were to haul all of that over to Teagan, d’you think he’d give more caps for your haul or for this, hm, rather ludicrous amount of frag grenades, 5mm and .45mm ammo… fusion cells and this box of oddly modded rifles…”

“Got lucky with a raider haul,” Brandis said modestly. The op had been a pain in the ass, at that, an extended firefight through an old quarry. Thankfully, although Anderson was extremely shaky on grenade usage and small arms, he was a fair shot once given an elevated position and a decent sniper rifle.

“Team O’Meara also wins on the tech haul,” Nate added dryly. 

“No fair!” Tanaka objected. “We had a whole _box_ of stuff!”

“Yes, but apparently the other team’s haul, according to Quinlan, was more useful,” Nate arched an eyebrow. “What with being about sentry bot design and not some sort of expository discussion about why alarm clocks need to contain nuclear material. Which I admit has been a personal curiosity of mine for a while, but Quinlan’s decision is final.” 

Rhys grumbled. “Just because the other team has a Scribe…” 

“Just because _your_ team didn’t bother to read any of the tech docs that you grabbed,” Haylen shot back sweetly. 

“Settle down,” Brandis said sharply, as Rhys and Haylen glared at each other.

“ _However_ ,” Nate continued, “Team Tanaka wins. Purely on supplies.”

“No fair,” Ella yelped. “We won on firearms and tech!”

“ _And_ we had a crate of moonshine,” O’Meara objected.

“Which got a number of initiates and Knights intoxicated enough to start a series of escalating drunken dares,” Nate said dryly, “Which _then_ , I should add, got me dressed down by Knight Captain Cade and _then_ by the Elder for, I quote, being ‘irresponsible’. _And_ moonshine is now banned aboard the Prydwen. So we’ve fucked it for everyone.”

“ _Not_ our fault,” O’Meara grumbled, though Tanaka smirked.

“Moonshine incident aside,” Nate said pointedly. “Knight Silva has told me that Team Tanaka has _cake_.”

“Can’t beat cake,” Silva said smugly, gently patting the slightly battered box that took pride of place on the table. “From Croup Manor. For beating up the muties that burned their crops and running assist on the supply chain. Their brahmin just had a calf. Lots of milk.” 

“ _Cheese_ cake,” Nate said reverently, opening the box to reveal the prize. It looked like an uneven, off-white cinderblock pasted on top of some weirdly brown base, in Brandis’ opinion, but everyone clustered close when Nate cut slices and handed them out. It was rich, and not too sweet, the base crumbly and buttery, a few nuggets of tart mutfruit scattered through.

“Holy fuck,” Ella said, in a reverent whisper. 

“Holy fuck,” Anderson agreed, his eyes squeezed closed.

“Wow,” Silva murmured, wide-eyed, her mouth full. 

“Okay,” O’Meara conceded grudgingly. “You guys win.”

“Ha!” Tanaka leaped up onto a stool, wincing only slightly as her still swollen ankle scraped against the edge. “ _Suck it!_ ” 

“I’ll buy everyone the first round of drinks,” Nate said cheerfully. “But after that, it’s on Brandis.”

“Thanks, sir,” Brandis said dryly. 

“Don’t mention it. Now maybe you should go pass some of this to the Elder,” Nate had left a small slice on a plate. “For goodwill and all that.” 

“Shouldn’t that be something for the CO to do?” Brandis inquired, though he picked up the plate. 

“I’m pretty OK on goodwill this week,” Nate drawled. “Check in on me next week after I piss the boss off all over again.” Silva was the first to laugh, and the others joined in as Brandis nodded and headed off. He knew the gesture for what it was. Nate was definitely not selfish about credit. 

Elder Maxson wasn’t at the main command deck, or in his room. Puzzled, Brandis hesitated at the stairwell, then he heard the muffled sound of murmured, familiar-sounding chatter from the brig. He padded down the steps quietly, angling towards the noise, and stopped next to the crates, blinking.

Maxson actually flinched violently, startled. He had been kneeling on the deck, tickling the Sentinel’s dog, which was wagging its tail furiously, panting and wiggling. Now Maxson scrambled to his feet, flushing like a boy caught with his hand in a sweet jar, while the dog whined in protest.

“Present for you sir,” Brandis said neutrally, and set the plate down on a crate. “Spoils of war.” 

“Thank you, Paladin,” Maxson said tightly. “Dismissed.” 

“Yes sir,” Brandis said, keeping his expression blank as he started to turn around. A sudden “Brandis?” stopped him in his tracks. 

“Sir?”

Maxson glowered at him. “Pretend you don’t know this about me.” 

“… All right sir,” Brandis said, though he was pretty sure his amusement was starting to show, and hastily retreated up the stairs, grinning to himself. Well, well.

.MacCready And Friends

“Piper, your paper is bullshit,” MacCready complained, slapping the latest copy of _Publick Occurrences_ down on the Power Noodles counter.

“Excuse you,” Piper raised an eyebrow. “It’s investigative journalism.” 

Beside her, Hancock picked up the paper. “Dunno. What’s wrong with it? Seems like a pretty OK lowdown on what happened. Luring Swan and all that. Just didn’t name He Who Could Not Be Named.”

“I still can’t believe that you guys did that.” Nate grabbed the paper off Hancock’s hands, noodle bowl now forgotten, and scanned through the paper quickly. “You called Danse a ‘Helpful Citizen’? Oh man. Can I have this?” 

Danse grabbed the copy and flicked through it. Then he sighed. “Remember what I said about a low profile, Piper?”

“I didn’t mention your name!”

“It has my description _and_ the make of my rifle _and_ the dialogue…” 

“Okay fine. To be fair, I don’t think the Brotherhood really reads _Publick Occurrences_.” 

“… True,” Danse conceded grudgingly. 

“Couldn’t you have just given him a fake name?” MacCready shook his head, climbing up onto a seat. “No thanks, Takahashi, I’m good,” he added, when the protectron rumbled an inquiry. Hancock was, perhaps uncharacteristically, treating everyone to a bowl of noodles, and somehow Nate had glommed an invite even though he hadn’t technically even participated. 

“Using fake names for sources is so last century,” Piper said pointedly. “Was that your problem? Seriously?”

“No. My problem is. Why am I not in this story at all?” 

“‘Course you are.” Piper leaned precariously over the counter and grabbed the copy off Danse. “See. This bit. ‘And a rifle shot distracted Swan, long enough for Helpful Citizen and Mayor Hancock to get clear.’” 

“It was a great shot,” MacCready scowled. “You could’ve put my name on it.”

“Too many characters already,” Piper said loftily. 

“You put _Nate_ in it, and he didn’t even contribute. He has a _full paragraph_ at the end,” MacCready complained.

“That’s ‘cos a quote from a ‘Brotherhood Source’ sells papers.” Piper admitted.

Nate nodded sagely. “I said whatever she wanted me to say. What?” Nate asked, as Danse sighed. “It’s called public relations. Free advertising.”

“Well, I like the article,” Hancock decided. “‘Cos my name appears the most times. Speaking of advertising, KL-E-0 wanted to know, ever thought of putting in ads? She wants to get more coverage for her shop. Working on her branding, she says.” 

“Sorry no,” Piper said firmly, “I’m an independent paper. You want me to end up like Diamond City Radio?” 

“… True, but you could just have a page at the back with classifieds,” Nate suggested, “And people can read it if they like. Doesn’t have to be stamped all over the main part of your paper.”

“What’s classifieds?” Piper asked curiously. 

“It’s a part of a paper where people pay you to pack it full of ads and notices. Like say, maybe MacCready here wants to sell a pistol for a hundred caps, he might pay you ten caps to put that in the paper.” 

“… wouldn’t I just head right over to the market?” MacCready asked, puzzled. 

“Maybe it’s a special pistol and you want to get a better price,” Hancock said thoughtfully. “Huh. Making money out of encouraging people to buy things that they don’t need. I _like_ this idea.” 

“You would,” Danse said disapprovingly. 

“Sounds like it could work,” Piper conceded.

“You kiddin’ me? It’s gonna take off. Human nature, right?” Hancock said expansively.

“I guess I might want to buy an ad,” MacCready conceded. “Depending on what you’re asking for. I’m looking for a certain type of meds.” 

“… to get high on?” Hancock asked.

“No! For uh. For someone sick.”

“Sounds important,” Piper blinked.

“It is.” 

“Why didn’t you just ask me from the start, if it’s important?” Nate demanded. “I mean. I have access to Brotherhood stores. To Institute data. We could fly back to the Prydwen right now.”

“Uh. True. I guess. I wanted to be sure.” MacCready said, feeling increasingly foolish. _Just a little while more, Duncan_. “Thanks.”

.Danse

It was growing dark by the time Nate and Danse dragged all the ghoul bodies downwind out of the prospective settlement spot and burned them, so as not to attract feral dogs or yao guai to the meat. The Warwicks had told them of the possible spot, and Danse had to concede that it was, strategically, a good idea. The back of the partly ruined villa faced outwards towards a deep lake, which meant that only the front section needed to be fenced off and reinforced.

“No point working on that today,” Nate suggested, as Danse righted a fence post that had been knocked flat. “I’ll just call in a vertibird tomorrow, get them to tell the Warwicks that their friends can move in.”

“Vertibirds aren’t meant to be used so casually,” Danse said, though he followed Nate into the house. Part of the roof over the living room was in disrepair, and the stairs up to the mostly broken second floor had to work to hold their weight, creaking loudly as they headed up to the sheltered half of the house. It still smelled a little of ghoul, though the smell wasn’t so bad up on the second floor, next to the windows. 

“I’m the Sentinel, I can do what I like,” Nate shot back, settling down on the only intact mattress in the villa and starting to pull off his boots. When Danse hesitated, Nate raised his eyebrows. “Something wrong?”

“The perimeter’s hardly secure.”

“What d’you want to do, turn the garden into a minefield? We already cleared the ghouls out. There’s no raiders in miles, and ‘sides, anything coming up to get us is gonna have to run the gauntlet of those stairs. Which might break under _us_ tomorrow, even.” 

“I could keep watch-“

“Oh, for… c’mere.” Nate kicked off his boots and nudged over, smirking up at Danse as he hooked his thumbs in Danse’s belt. “You really want to keep bitching about the perimeter when I’m about to offer to suck you off?”

“ _Nate_ ,” Danse gasped. He was never going to get used to how _blunt_ Nate could be about this. 

“I like you without the power armour,” Nate purred, coyly tugging off Danse’s belt, “Been staring at that ass of yours all day-“

“That explains the sudden drop in your combat efficiency,” Danse said dryly, pulling off his rifle strap and dropping it carefully on a rusty chair, and Nate chuckled.

“Man, you have _no_ idea. Having to face down a ghoul pack while fighting a hard-on. I should get some sorta award. And each time you say ‘where do you want me?’ when we’re talking tactics?” Nate kissed the growing tent in Danse’s dark leather trousers, then rubbed his cheek against it as Danse bit out a moan. “ _Very_ fucking distracting. The number of times I nearly just said ‘naked and on your knees’-“ 

“I had no idea your discipline was this lacking,” Danse said dryly, as Nate chuckled again and caught the zipper with his teeth, grinning smugly as he pulled it down. The hand that Danse had carded through Nate’s unruly fringe shook as he turned breathless. _Creator_ , Nate was good at this and he knew it. By the time Nate slid Danse’s underwear and trousers to his knees, he was already panting, dazed, senses going into overdrive. 

He had little time to think about it, to _process_ \- Nate licked up his cock greedily and took it into his mouth, no teasing today, just hunger, a low, possessive growl rumbling through him as Danse clutched at his shoulders and choked out a whimper. Fingers tugged pointedly at his hips, then pinched his ass, and when Danse jerked forward involuntarily, Nate merely growled again and gagged as he tried to take Danse deeper, hell, it was too much like this, too _perfect_ , nothing that Danse deserved. Their positions should be reversed - _Danse_ should be the supplicant, Nate the subject of worship; Danse had not meant it lightly when he had said that Nate was the most important person in his world. In a way, Nate _was_ Danse’s world now, enmeshed, _his_ bedrock; when Danse’s life had come adrift he had been drawn inexorably into Nate’s orbit. And he knew now that he would not - could not - have changed this for the world.

“Don’t do that,” Danse hissed, as Nate’s free hand ducked down to his own belt. Nate pulled off with a wet pop, flicking his glance up questioningly, and Danse felt himself flush with embarrassment and want both. “I’ve… got a better idea.”

“Hmm,” Nate smirked, amused again, though he dropped his hand back to his thigh. “Want to share, or is it a surprise?”

“I want you,” Danse began, hesitated, then managed the rest in a rush before he could regret it, “Inside me.” 

Nate stared up at him, so surprised that for a moment Danse wondered if he had said something wrong. It wasn’t as though Danse hadn’t been on the receiving end before: Nate liked to switch. Though Danse had never asked outright before, not like this- “Fuck,” Nate growled, and licked his lips. “Get on the mattress then. Hands and knees.” 

Danse obeyed, awkward as it was with his trousers caught at his knees, the lapels of his leather jacket bunching up over his shoulders, the straps of the shoulder armour creaking and pulling at his arms. The discomfort barely registered, with Nate so close, kneeling behind him, hand working in a fist up Danse’s cock, nice and wet from Nate’s mouth. 

They used gun oil to ease the way, and again, Danse wondered if the hungry way his body just took Nate’s fingers was because of its synth make or just Danse’s own growing desperation, the fit tight; he was even greedy for the pain from the stretch, biting down his cries. Noise would call attention they didn’t need, and right now, all _Danse_ needed was to have _more_ , more of the teasing, scissoring press and thrust of Nate’s long, gun-rough fingers, more of Nate’s rusty, low laughter and his whispered praise. 

“That’s it,” Nate murmured, against Danse’s spine, pressing a kiss that Danse could only feel dimly through his coat. “God, you’re good at this.” Danse had to hastily press his mouth against his arm to stifle a groan, and Nate let out a startled laugh. “Liked that, huh? Suppose you would've,” Nate rubbed a callused thumb against the tip of Danse’s leaking cock, then the pressure dropped away, Nate’s hand going up to Danse’s hip. As Danse let out a low hiss of reproach, Nate drawled, “Bet you don’t need that. How good can you be for me, Danse? Think you can come just on my cock? Know you can,” Nate added, as Danse’s next breath cracked into a sob. “You always try so hard to please me.” 

“Fuck,” Danse whispered. “Nate, just-“ He clenched tight over the fingers within him. “ _Now_.” 

“Loud and clear,” Nate nipped Danse on the ass playfully as he drew his fingers away, unzipping himself, and as always it was damning how _good_ it was like this, the slow fit of their bodies locking together, Nate’s moans pressed in perfect whispers against Danse’s neck, the pain, the _fullness_ , his own choked, shocked gasps, so much like sobs. “Jesus, you feel so good,” Nate began, then laughed when Danse let out a whine and ground back against him without thinking. “Hell, even _that_? I wasn’t even trying yet.”

“You’re going to be the death of me,” Danse muttered breathlessly, cheeks burning, glaring at the filthy mattress. 

“Maybe.” Nate conceded, and bit him on the back of his neck. “You’re so _tight_. Feels like you’re made for me, angel. You’re perfect.” 

“Move,” Danse suggested urgently, trying to roll his hips, but Nate laughed and held him tight. 

“When I’m ready, soldier. But that kinda eagerness is nice to see. Little bit more,” Nate whispered, in that low, husky purr of his. “You’re doing well.” 

By the time Nate decided Danse was ready for more, Danse was so close to the edge already that it wasn’t even funny, his hands shaking so much that he was already on his elbows. He dug fingers into his mouth to stifle his cry as Nate growled something against his back and started _finally_ , thank Heaven, to _move_ , and Nate seemed just as desperate now as Danse was, his thrusts jerky and sharp, shoving even Danse’s heavier frame up against the mattress each time he buried himself. 

He could barely even make out what Nate was saying between their gasps, the teasing weight of Nate’s voice shorn to a guttural liquid snarl. This was animal pleasure between them, out of control, teeth against the back of Danse’s neck, a yowl tearing loose from his throat; he was clenching up, shaking, blindsided. Nate shoved him down and hissed something and the new angle was gloriously _deeper_ ; if Danse could get hard again so quickly he would’ve, like this, pinned down and taken, _possessed_. When Nate finally came in a thick rush of heat he was laughing, gasping, fucking all that mess deeper. 

Nate was still chuckling softly, noiselessly, as they lay spent on the mattress afterwards, the air stinking of sex and sweat and gun oil. “What?” Danse whispered, sleepy now, his arm curled under Nate’s waist, boots and trousers kicked off somewhere. 

“Wasn’t the noisy one this time.”

“Couldn’t help it,” Danse grumbled, and Nate smirked at him, smug enough that Danse had to drag him up to kiss it off his face.

“Hey,” Nate said drowsily, as they lay there, kissing, lazy and fumbling. “If you had a chance to fix the world… but the downside was that you had to make a deal with a devil… Would you?” 

“A devil?”

“Well… maybe not a devil. More like something that you can’t begin to understand. An unknown factor.” 

Danse thought this over as he pulled Nate close, felt the grizzled brush of Nate’s stubbled jaw against his neck, lips tracing an uneven, tender path down. “I wouldn’t change anything about my world,” Danse whispered finally, and tipped up Nate’s chin, for a closemouthed kiss, tender, soft.

.Nate

Nate could tell that none of his companions really understood why he wanted to trek all the way back to Vault 111 just to disengage a pod, carry a body back up and bury it. No one buried bodies any longer. Ferals could smell meat, especially if it started to rot, and it was easier to just leave corpses where they were, or burn them. Nate opted for carefully piling rocks over Nora’s grave. She had never liked the idea of cremation. _I want to go back into the soil instead_ , she had told him once, laughing. _Feed a tree_.

“No trees left to feed, honey,” Nate whispered, as he nudged his wedding ring under one of the rocks, sitting down on the dirt before the new cairn. “Maybe not for a while, anyway.” 

Danse had offered to come up and help, but Nate had wanted to do this himself. _Needed_ to do this for himself. His hands burned from having to break the hard soil with his shovel, but this was a good spot. Fair view of the world, further up from the Vault. Nice spot to watch the sun go down. They’d sat here before, in better days, years before the Vault had even been dug, when they were younger and drunk on love, when the world was full of easy marvels, and war had been something that happened to other people.

“Hey baby,” Nate said quietly. “Guess I haven’t been to see you since I left. I should’a come back before, to do this. Got no excuses. Guess I thought I couldn’t face you, in a way. I killed our son. You nearly died bringing him into the world, and I…” Nate let out a harsh, strangled sound. “Guess your mom was right. Shouldn’t have married a soldier, honey. Nothing good came to you out of that in the end. I’m sorry.”

“Some days I wonder whether things would’a been different,” Nate continued idly. “The people I met here… would things have been different if I had been the one who’d been carrying Shaun, you think? Would I have died too, like that? Would you have lived instead? Some days I think that might’ve been better, if it’d happened that way. You told me once: when you were in the first year of law school, your lecturer asked your class why they’d chosen to go into law, and you and another girl were the only people who said they weren’t in it for the money. You just wanted to make the world better. Me, I was always good at destroying things. Killing things.”

“You probably would’ve done better than me out here, with the cards we got,” Nate confessed. “Don’t think you would’ve cared much for some of my new friends. Some of those I had to kill to get here, though… I think you would’ve liked Deacon. He would’ve made you laugh. Desmodena? She was your kinda ballbreaker. And I uh, met someone else. Don’t know if you would’ve liked him either. He’s a bit of an asshole,” Nate said wryly. “But his heart’s mostly in the right place, and he’s starting to try to do better.”

“But… God. I killed Shaun. I did more than that. Before he died I destroyed him first. Everything that he ever cared about. Some kinda father I turned out to be, huh? A long time ago I told you that the world was never gonna change. That people had figured out how easy it was to kill each other early on, from the start of time, and they’d never figured out how to _stop_. You didn’t agree, remember? We had a fight. First fight, even.” 

“Turns out I was right and you were wrong, Nora. It’s been two hundred years. There’s so few of us left and the world is dead, and we’re still killing each other out there. It’s like we’re finally all crazy. Or maybe we were crazy all along, and it just wasn’t obvious until there were only a few of us _left_. I don’t know. You were always the smart one. Me, if a problem can’t be solved by shooting it, hell, that’s me shit out of luck.”

“But I think I might’ve found a way out,” Nate added, as he got slowly to his feet. “There might be a way to break the cycle. I don’t know if you’d have approved. Or if I’m even going to do it. Feels to me like I’d be unchaining God. Setting something loose that might be far worse than what had come before. Or maybe it’ll cure our insanity, somehow. I don’t know. Some days I don’t know what to hope for.” 

“Sun’s going down now, babe,” Nate said quietly. “You used to like this part.” 

He waited, while the sun burned orange and crimson over the clouds, vermilion to purple to indigo in a breathless, glorious brush of colour. Then Nate patted the cairn, and murmured his last goodbyes, and set off down the slope, towards the vertibird that waited further below. He had an appointment to keep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretend you don’t know this about me - Dragon Age’s Cassandra
> 
> MacCready’s quest - I have no idea why, when his son’s life is at stake, that you still have to be Admired with MacCready for him to trust you with it… esp since the SS pretty much wanders around the Commonwealth doing extensive quests for far less justification...

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :)  
> \--  
> Some final notes:
> 
> 1\. Damn I totally forgot about Preston. Sorry bb. I kinda spent most of the game trying to pretend he didn't exist. Because talking to him would just load up more radiant quests...  
> 2\. Further reading for those still curious about AI: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom  
> 3\. The law school thing actually happened in my first year. Most of my class said they were in it for the golds.  
> 4\. I am so heavily reliant on wiki.  
> 5\. Partway through playing Fallout I read a semi-spoiler by accident on reddit which said that you'd end up the bossman of whatever faction you finally choose. This turned out to be inaccurate where BoS was concerned and I was extremely disappointed. D: Turns out there was originally a Bethesda storyline where Danse will support you in overthrowing Maxson, but personally I'm glad that was taken out. Feels very OOC for Danse. 
> 
> \--  
> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent


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